Be Fruitful and Multiply
by lonaj
Summary: Another new section added. After three years in space, the Galactica wages a final lone battle at the Cylon home world.
1. Prologue

"Do you know how much I love you?" Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol whispered into Lieutenant Sharon Valerii's ear. The hulk of the captured Cylon drone glowered above them and at their feet a temporary ramp led up into its black guts.

Capturing the crippled drone had been the Galactica's first real success in three years of death, terror and running. Crazy Doctor Baltar's Redleken generator had changed the drone from a frightening war machine into a zombie. Since most of Baltar's designs had ended up on the scrap heap, they'd been amazed it had actually worked as advertised. Unfortunately for Baltar, he'd been too dead by that time to take his usual lion's share of the credit.

The battle had cost three Vipers and their pilots, a freighter and three hundred and seventy-eight men, women and children. Another two hundred twenty-three had been rescued from the freighter's burning hulk and jammed into the remaining forty ships. From all reports, the civilians were stacked like firewood. And the fleet had lost more than people -- they'd lost heart. Another wave of suicides had followed the attack. Fleet Commander Adama and President Roslin needed a triumph to lift everyone's spirits. Tyrol hoped that he had it for them -- if Sharon could just get this frakkin' monster flying …

"Shhh," Sharon murmured. "They're coming." She twitched a little but stayed within the circle of Tyrol's arms. Although the drone's starboard wing hid most of the far side of the hangar, Tyrol saw three pairs of uniformed legs approaching. He'd been waiting to give an inspection tour to Sharon and the Galactica's senior officers -- the Commander, the X.O. Colonel Tigh, and Commander Air Group Captain Adama who was the Commander's son.

Sharon had been tapped to be the drone's pilot when test flights began in a few days. Just coming off a fleet patrol, she still wore her flight suit and her pistol. Since Tyrol had been working under ultra-tight security, she'd never seen the Redleken or the drone up close. She looked tired, but excited and utterly adorable.

Tyrol didn't care if the senior officers saw him holding Sharon. "We're official now, you and me. Nobody's going to say anything."

"Come on, Gay," Sharon said twisting out of his arms to turn and look him in the face. "It's a joint adoption contract, not a marriage license. And they'll say plenty. Even officers don't cuddle on duty." Since they weren't married, it had taken Sharon and Tyrol the better part of the last three years and five different custody hearings, but they were soon going to be Boxey's legal parents. Tyrol's excitement had been bubbling over ever since the Commander had told them yesterday. He felt sure that the next time he asked Sharon to marry him, she'd say "yes". She's said "no" too many times and would never tell him why. It was about time he got lucky.

He and Sharon both stood at attention and saluted as the three officers walked up. "What have you got for us, Chief?" the Commander asked.

"Plenty," Tyrol assured him. "Come on in, I'll show you!" They all marched up the ramp, making it ring like a xylophone. Sharon lagged a bit behind.

Since no light came through the drone's heavily tinted canopy, Tyrol had rigged halogens. When he connected the power cord, the cabin's furnishings leapt out of the shadows. One lamp spotlighted the pilot console, which was still only about half re-assembled. It had hand controls for piloting and seats, possibly intended for Cylon biosynthetic units. Three more lamps illuminated a bulkhead that had been peeled back to reveal the massive Cylon artificial intelligence. Multi-colored loose wires sprouted from silicon cards and cascaded onto the floor like obscene hair.

The powered-down Redleken generator stood a few feet away in case the drone rebooted and tried to come online. It had a separate massive power cord that ran down the ramp and over to one of Galactica's standard power sockets. The Redleken took a lot of juice and wasn't mobile enough a weapon to win the Cylon war for them, but it had its uses. At least they'd caught this drone.

"Jesus, what a mess," Colonel Tigh said as he and Captain Adama peered into the pilot console's scrambled guts then sat down to test the flight controls. Except for absolute necessity of duty, Tyrol hadn't spoken directly to Colonel Tigh for three years. During a Judgment Day crisis Tigh had ordered the deaths of eighty-five crewmen under Tyrol's command.

Captain Adama tweaked the various buttons and knobs. The spotlight illumined both his and Tigh's faces in strong relief. "Power," the Captain said, laying a finger next to a large bright red button. "Attitude," he pointed at a dial with a flat horizon. "Homing signal," a crosshatched display.

The Captain was a good guesser; that matched everything that he and Cally had figured out. Behind Tyrol the Commander asked a question and he turned to answer. "No, sir. As near as we can tell, the brain is dead. We're still trying to rewire bypass flight controls, but I think we'll be ready for Lieutenant Valerii in a few days."

"Dead, huh?" the Commander said. He looked at the Redleken speculatively. "And this did it?"

"Yes, Sir."

Sharon had been standing quietly, looking around the cabin with an odd expression somewhere between fear and distaste. "Frakkin' freak," she muttered. She had one hand on the grip of her pistol as though she expected a Cylon to jump out of a secret compartment and kill them all.

"How does the generator work?" the Commander asked. He'd approved its development, but that had been more than two years ago, back when Baltar was still alive.

"Well, Sir, it creates an electromagnetic field in the same spectrum as we found at Ragnar. It's a sort of a miniature planet; that's why it takes so much juice. Totally harmless to humans." That brought a big smile to the Commander's rugged old face. It had been quite awhile since Tyrol had seen him so happy, and anxious to keep the smile in place, he said, "Here, let me demonstrate it for you." Reaching out he flicked the generator's simple switch and turned the analog power dial up half way. No need to risk a power brown out. The Redleken's array of lights began to pulse.

"Not much to see," the Commander said. "But that's good. Don't want to make it a target."

"No, sir. I …" Sharon's scream interrupted what Tyrol had been about to say.

"Oh frak! Oh Holy Lords!" She'd fallen to her knees, and arms wrapped around her stomach she rocked back and forth as if in pain.

The Commander was the closest. Stepping her way, he put a hand on a bent shoulder and asked, "Lieutenant, are you alright?" She shook the hand away.

Only a second later Tyrol was on his knees beside her, trying to hold her up. "Sharon! Sweetheart, what's the matter?"

"Turn … it … off," she growled in a voice Tyrol didn't recognize.

"What, darling? The Redleken? But why …?"

Commander Adama had circled around to look at them both. "Disarm her," he ordered.

Tyrol looked up at him, confused. "But, Sir …"

"Disarm her, now!" the Commander barked.

It was too late. Sharon had pulled out her pistol and surged to her feet. She tried to pull off a shot in the general direction of the Commander but Tyrol grabbed her arm and the shot went wild. Then they were fighting over the pistol, struggling for control. The pistol was somewhere between them, Tyrol wasn't sure where. He was the taller and heavier but Sharon had become unbelievably strong. Her distorted face was only inches from his. This was insane. "Sharon!" Tyrol cried. "Sharon stop!"

Her answer was to look him in the eye and sneer, "Weak human! What a waste of resources." He felt the pistol's barrel press into his left arm and heard the shot go off then his universe narrowed down to one single sensation -- pain. After that there was nothing at all.

.

Colonel Paul Tigh, Galactica's Executive Officer for five years and Commander Bill Adama's friend for a hell of a lot longer than that, couldn't believe he'd heard right. "You want _me_ to convince Tyrol to help with Valerii? The man will kill me if he ever gets the chance."

The Commander looked up from on the CIC plotting table and the charts displaying nearby G class stars. The astrometrics team had found two possible colony sites on this flank of the Slasenger Nebula, and he was trying to decide between them. Across the plotting table's glass surface a long crack ran like iridescent lightning, but they had nothing to repair it with and Tigh seldom noticed anymore.

The Commander said, "If the Chief tried to kill you, at least he'd be doing something, Paul. Right now he just stares off into space. I can't get him to say anything to me but 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir.' We need to try a different tactic, and I'm afraid you're it."

Tigh sighed. "You know, back in the academy it was kinda fun playing your hit man, but I'm getting too old for this. I'll have to start packing a pistol and checking out dark corners." He glanced at the Commander to make sure he understood the joke.

The Commander was giving him that steady, tight-lipped smile that meant, "You've got your orders, Soldier. March."

Tigh rolled his eyes up to CIC's shadowed overhead, but he marched. "Damn it," he grumbled to himself under his breath as he left CIC. "Tyrol wouldn't listen to me if I were the last officer left on Galactica." But if Bill wanted him to try it, he would.

Stopping by the Commander's quarters, Tigh picked up the transcript Dualla had made of Valerii's babblings and headed down to sickbay.

Now that the last of the battle's burn victims had either died or been released, sickbay had returned to its usual flow of illness and injury. It was as quiet as a mausoleum. By order of the Commander, Tyrol had a private room. A burly Marine on suicide watch sat by the hatch reading one of Galactica's small library of paper books, a murder mystery judging by the lurid cover. Tigh nodded to him and said, "Wait outside but don't go far."

The Commander had been right about one thing -- with Tigh around, Chief Tyrol didn't stare at nothing. Instead he glared at Tigh with a blazing hatred that promised to melt the Colonel's jacket buttons, as though he'd found someone to blame for his misery.

"And just what are you supposed to be here for?" the Chief snarled. Pain lines deeply etched his face. They'd run out of painkillers in the first year, and Tyrol's doctor said that Tyrol had declined acupuncture. Tigh didn't care much for the pincushion concept either. A complicated set of pulleys kept Tyrol's left arm elevated to reduce swelling. A half empty mug of protein drink rested on a bedside table. Tigh laid the transcript down beside it.

"Chief Tyrol … Galen, I'm here because you're a soldier and a damned fine one. Now the Commander has told you he has a job and I think it's about time you … "

The Chief interrupted him. "I'm not a soldier. If that's what the Commander calls a job, I'm nothing anymore! You can take that patriotic crap and … "

Raising his voice to parade ground volume, the Colonel re-took the conversational high ground. "Don't try to unload your shit on me, Tyrol." Putting both his fists on the Chief's rumpled bed, Tigh leaned in close and said with a sour sneer he pulled up from his own three years of pain, frustration and loss, "I don't have time for your garbage. I've seen men like you before -- clear space soldiers. Fine for the good times, but they can't take the heat. I'll just tell the Commander that he's wrong about you. You don't give a rat frak about honor or loyalty. You aren't worth the rations."

With a grunt and a squeaking of pulleys and chains Tyrol tried to lunge at Tigh, but he was too weak and too firmly tied in place. The move wrenched his wounded arm, and he had to gasp and pant for a moment before he said in a hate-filled, sobbing snarl, "You think you're some big shot 'cause you're the X.O. You're nothing but an old drunk and this is nothing but an insane asylum." Slamming back into his pillows, he moaned, "Damn, damn, damn." His body curled around the hanging arm and tears rolled down his cheeks.

There's nothing like tears to wash away pain. Tigh let the Chief cry a moment then he pulled a towel from a wall rack and silently dropped it in Tyrol's scrunched-up lap.

Tyrol's free hand plucked at the towel, then snuffling he picked it up and wiped off his face. "Sorry, sir," he mumbled. "I'll do what I can to help. Please, just not ... I can't. Not yet."

Tigh breathed a silent sigh of relief. He'd thought for sure the Chief was going to hurt himself. "You're a good man, Galen." Picking up the transcript, he held it out. "This is what Valerii's said so far. Read it over today and tomorrow we'll talk again."

The Chief took the short stack of paper. "Yes, Sir."

.

There was one last length of passageway left before the short stairwell leading down to the high security brig. Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol wasn't quite ready to take it, not just yet. Leaning on his good arm against the dark passageway's gray bulkhead, he gazed through one of the few portholes in this part of the Galactica. Unlike the upper levels close to CIC where the concave hull curve made bulkheads slant inwards like a tent, here they slanted out and the porthole's view was down from their plane of flight rather than up or to the side.

The Slasenger Nebula's blaze of white, pink and orange danced across the small pane of glass, and although Tyrol couldn't see it from here, ahead a yellow G-class sun had grown over the last week from a pinprick of light indistinguishable from a hundred thousand others to a small yellow orb. The astrometrics team already had a name for it -- Zodiac, an obscure Holy Scrolls' reference according to Commander Adama.

It would be humanity's new home. Maybe … if Sharon actually knew the location of the Cylon home world as she claimed …

As it claimed, Tyrol reminded himself. Sharon wasn't a human being, it was a machine cleverly designed to mimic human emotions and feelings. It couldn't love anymore than he could process algorithms.

And it couldn't hurt him unless he let it, that's what he had to tell himself. It wasn't Sharon. There never had been a Sharon. Everything he'd felt for three years had been a lie, a farce that everyone had watched. Just another reason to hate the frakkin' Cylons.

A folded length of black cotton hung from Tyrol's neck and supported his still weak left arm. Pulling out a piece of paper he'd tucked there for safekeeping, he scanned one last time through the questions he was supposed to cover: the Cylon home world's coordinates, its armaments and defenses, how Cylons communicate with each other, and who or what had central authority.

The Sharon obscenity had promised she'd tell Tyrol anything he asked. From what Commander Adama said, she'd been begging to see him and Boxey. Lollygagging here admiring the scenery wouldn't get the job done. He straightened up, tucked the paper back in his sling, and walked down the passageway.

The lights in the high security brig had been dimmed. They must have diverted some of the lighting juice to run the Redleken generator full-time. It hummed and blinked in one corner. The Commander said it kept Sharon from reporting back to the Cylon headquarters, but it was slowly killing her.

As soon as Tyrol stepped into the room, the guard had left murmuring as started up the stairs, "When you're done call me on channel 9. I'll be sacking out in the guardroom." One of the security cameras tracked Tyrol. The other stayed pointed into Sharon's cell.

Sharon sat on a bunk, her long black hair matted and veiling her face, and her arms and legs folded up like a collapsed puppet. They'd stripped her down to underwear for security. She must be cold.

Sharon hadn't yet looked up and he hadn't been particularly quiet.

What the frak should he call her? Sharon? Boomer? Bitch? He sure as hell wasn't going to call her Sweetheart.

Coming close to the cell's iron bars, he said, "Sharon. It's Galen."

In one fast movement she was on her feet and hitting the cell bars like she hadn't even noticed they were there. One arm came through and clawed at him. He stepped back hastily, almost losing his balance.

Sharon laughed, an unpleasant sound that had little to do with humor. "Woo-hoo, would you look at that? Made you jump like a leafhopper. You're so scared of me you're gonna piss your pants, aren't you, Gay?"

He didn't know what he'd expected. Maybe Sharon acting like a entertainment vid. chrome toaster Cylon saying with a machine synthesized voice "by your command" and "I cannot process that." But this thing … every move it made, every sound out of its mouth … It was Sharon. Devil possessed and horrifying, but still Sharon.

This was going to be hell.

"Commander said you wanted to talk to me, so talk."

"Talk? Me talk? I've got nothing to say. Hey, Gay, you want some of this?" The Sharon thing turned around, pulled down her panties and wagged her buttocks at him. Looking back over her shoulder, she said, "Still got plenty of it."

Whatever the Commander had expected him to accomplish, Tyrol couldn't deal with this. "Go frak yourself," he snarled and turned to go.

"No, Gay! Please, no, don't go! Please!" It was a heart-deep wail. At the foot of the stairwell Tyrol turned and looked back. Sharon's demeanor had changed completely. Back at the bars, she thrust her face between them as far as she could. "Please," she moaned. "I can't control her. Help me, do something. Turn up the power on the Redleken."

Tyrol stepped toward the generator. The analog dial showed about three-quarter power, there wasn't a lot of play available. "Too much will kill you."

"Not right away! Turn it up! I want to talk to you, please. I can't fight her very long."

Carefully he turned the dial two clicks. Moaning Sharon slid down the bars until she sat on the deck. "That's better," she said between panting gasps. Her hands lay across her stomach and she looked almost green.

On the outside of the bars, Tyrol was on the floor next to her. "Sharon," he whispered. "Oh Lords. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He touched her shoulder.

She turned her head and made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a whimper. "You've got nothing to be sorry for, Gay. How … how's Boxey? How's he taking this?"

Tyrol hung his head. "Not good. He keeps asking to see you, but I can't let him. He thinks he's a man, but you know how tender-hearted he is."

"Yeah, I know. He's as bad as you are." Sharon shifted a little. "We'd better talk fast. I can feel her clawing around in here. She wants out. What does the Commander want to know?"

"The Cylon home world. We want to know where it is."

"Oh thank the Lords. You're going after them. You got something to write with? Good. Take this down."

Tyrol wrote exactly what she said. It was just a long string of numbers and words to him. He hoped that the cameras were getting it, because his hands were shaking so bad, he wasn't sure if he could read his own writing.

"What else do you need to know?"

"Armaments, defenses, anything like that."

She squeezed her eyes closed and her hands went up to hold her head. "I can't see that. All I see is this big moon that looks like a diamond." Her hands dropped back to stomach again and she looked at him. "And I think … yes, the streets to God are made of gold. That's crazy isn't it? I'm crazy." She started to cry, sank all the way down and rolled away groaning.

"Sharon? Sharon?" Tyrol cried out. He stuck his good hand through the bars to touch her.

Sharon snapped up, grabbed his arm, and bent it back hard.

"Damn you!" Tyrol screamed and with a wrench pulled free again. Awkwardly out of balance, he fell back on his butt and his bad arm. When Sharon tried to reach him through the bars, he scooted away, pushing himself with his boot heels until he was out of reach. He sat on the floor looking at her. If it had hurt before, this was ten times worse. He'd been talking to his Sharon and now she was gone again.

"Had you going, didn't I, Gay?" the Sharon thing taunted him. "It was all lies. Everything you and I ever did -- all those times we were together -- it was all a lie. Do you really think I'd tell you anything important?"

A thunder of footsteps sounded in the stairwell and a moment later two Marines and Colonel Tigh were standing over him. The Colonel offered him a hand up, but he ignored it. "Are you alright, Chief?"

"I'm fine. Just frakkin' fine, sir." He wasn't -- his arm was screaming at him, but he'd be damned if he'd tell Colonel Tigh. Rolling to his knees, Tyrol carefully got to his feet and stood swaying. He had to get out of here. Now. "If the Colonel doesn't need me, I'd like to go."

"Be my guest."

Gesturing to the Marines, the Colonel turned toward Sharon's cell. "Get back, Valerii," he snarled at Sharon. As Tyrol stumbled up the steps, a Marine pulled an electric prod out of his belt and stepped forward. Up in the passageway, finally clear of the sight and sound of the horrors below, Tyrol leaned against the bulkhead and began to cry.


	2. Chapter 1

"What do you mean you can't tell me?" Serena Adama demanded with a little girl whine. After two weeks in orbit above planet Zodiac, the novelty of fresh meat and greens had worn off, and she'd been toying with her food, pushing it around the cracked plastek plate. For the first time in three years Galactica had enough food, and so Lee couldn't fault his wife's picky appetite. Putting down her fork she leaned closer to him. "Come on Lee, tell the wifey. How soon are we going down to settle in? The shuttle pilot says there's this wonderful bluff just north of where he's been landing and I want to pick out the best building plot before they're all gone." Working her eyebrows suggestively, she said, "I'll let you sleep with me tonight. Come on, you know you want to."

Concerned about eavesdroppers, inadvertent or otherwise, Lee quickly glanced around them, but their closest fellow diners were two tables away and the large compartment held less than a dozen all told, and none of Serena's select clique of cronies were here, which was a mixed blessing of sorts. She wasn't showing off her most prized possession by hanging all over him, but he had no one to palm her off on. Serena hated to eat alone.

It was mid-second watch, and even without definite orders most of Galactica's crew had already begun sorting out and packing up the remaining bits and pieces of their lives. From all reports, Zodiac would be very similar to the twelve Colony worlds, and like everyone else in the fleet, the Galactica crew men and women ached to feel dirt under their feet, breathe fresh air and run in the rain. They were Colonial soldiers, but they were also human beings. And they'd been through enough pain.

Although Zodiac wasn't their original destination -- the half-mythical Earth -- it was the best planet for human habitation they'd found so far, and after three years in space they'd lost more than ten thousand people to Cylon sabotage, attacks, suicide, murder, famine, and plague. They couldn't afford to look anymore.

Lee couldn't be sure if Serena was serious. By his standards his wife's priorities were often rather … odd. "It wouldn't be much of a secret planning committee, if we started telling everyone, now would it?" he asked her. Although he'd been trying to keep his voice free of irritation, this time it had slipped out. Serena used sex like a warrior used a weapon and lately it had grown old.

Right next to being the daughter-in-law of the fleet commander, Serena loved nothing better than insider information and she was more than happy to nag for it. In her previous existence before Judgment Day, her husband had been Colonel Rashen Woolcott and she'd been important in Geminon high society. Lee's father, Galactica's commanding officer William Adama, had known Colonel Woolcott and recognized his lovely young trophy wife on Colonial One.

As an excuse to bring her onto the Galactica, Commander Adama had given Serena a job helping Lee with his Commander Air Group paperwork and scheduling, which had been more than the inexperienced young captain could handle at the time. Perhaps it had been her many years of juggling a jam-packed social calendar, but she'd done well.

Serena had been close to Lee every day and she'd been both lonely and lovely, an irresistible combination, and in the shared horror and misery of those first months, he would have fallen in love with anything warm and alive, much less a pair of bottomless blue eyes, soft brunette curls and a body that willingly fit his like a launch tube fit a Viper.

Serena hadn't responded to Lee's snappishness. He glanced up and saw her so fixedly staring over his shoulder that he turned and looked too. His best friend and fellow Viper pilot Lieutenant Kara Thrace had just come in, probably for a post-patrol snack since she still wore her dull green, worn-out flight suit. All of their clothing was beginning to fall apart after three years of almost continuous use. Except for Serena's. Somehow she always managed to find enough attractive clothes, soap, and makeup to keep all eyes turned her way.

Kara attacked the huge roast on the serving counter with a carving knife. The roast didn't have a prayer against the determined onslaught. Two huge slices joined the mountain of greens on her plate.

Serena said, "You told her, though, didn't you?"

Lee's head came back to his wife. "What makes you think that?" The truth was that he had, at least some of it. Although he'd been furious with Kara for a long time after Judgment Day -- she'd kept secrets that had nearly destroyed Lee's relationship with his father -- the logistics of survival had forced them eventually to reconcile; it had been either that or kill each other.

They'd tried the latter only once in a fistfight that had completely freaked out Serena. She'd thought Kara was going to kill him or something, but he'd come away with only a black eye and a loose tooth. He'd also lost his academy ring, apparently forever. Kara had done a little worse, with a broken nose and sprained wrist. Having come up through the ranks, she'd had no ring to lose. Only his father's pull, the shortage of trained pilots and their exalted rank had kept them both out of an extended stay in hack.

"Sometimes I feel like you're married to her, not me," Serena said.

"That's not fair, sweetheart. Kara and I have to work together."

Kara was Lee's deputy CAG. He'd had to tell her at least part of the committee's plan. The attack on the Cylon home world would be the Viper battle of a lifetime, something no true fighter pilot would want to miss. Lee didn't plan to. He assumed all his pilots would feel the same, and since there wouldn't be enough Vipers to go around, he needed Kara's opinion on who to take and who to leave behind.

The choices weren't easy. Those who went would probably die in a last desperate attempt to win this war. Those who stayed might very well have to give up space flight, which was for a pilot only a slightly lesser death.

His father was taking the plan to President Roslin tonight. Tomorrow they'd all know the decision.

"Kara was looking for you a few hours ago. She said she had some information you'd want before the next meeting."

"And you didn't tell me? Frak." Lee rose to his feet.

"Sorry. I forgot." Serena's innocent upturned face held no trace of guilt. She hated Kara. For that matter they hated each other. Kara called Serena "that stupid bitch." Serena called Kara "Butch." For his part, Lee hated being in the middle. He caught it from both sides. Whenever he defended Kara, his wife kicked him out of bed. When he stood up for Serena, Kara laughed herself silly.

Lee was furious with Serena now, and there was nothing more he wanted to say. As he turned to go, she called after him, "Hey, how about a kiss?" But he only scowled over his shoulder. If Serena didn't get her way, she always did her best to make him look bad. The other diners could hardly miss that bit of byplay.

Stalking across the compartment, Lee wondered if his marriage was worth saving. At least they didn't have children to worry about because Serena was sterile, a fact she'd conveniently forgotten to mention until they'd been married and childless for a year. She'd had a tubal ligation five years earlier at age twenty-one.

"Well, have it reversed!" he'd insisted. Right behind staying alive, babies were their highest priority.

Serena had refused. "My mother died in childbirth," she'd told Lee. "I'm not going to."

No one else knew. Not even Lee's father.

"Hey, Starbuck," Lee said, addressing Kara by her Viper call sign as he sat down opposite her. "What's up?"

Kara's usual full-lipped sunny smile answered him. "Hey, boss! Thought they'd spaced ya."

"Not yet." Out of the corner of his eye, Lee caught a glimpse of Serena coming their way, and across the table from him Kara looked ready for an upfront fight. Her eyes were narrowed and her fists had clenched around her knife and fork. But Serena just walked silently behind Lee then on to the tray racks. A few seconds later, she was out the hatch.

Kara leaned forward and whispered, "Tell me, Lee, 'cause I keep forgetting -- Just what did you see in that bitch?"

Lee closed his eyes, shook his head and answered the only way he could in a public place. "Kara, I don't want to talk about it, okay?"

"Sure. Anything you say, but she's still a bitch."

.

"Starbuck, you're hopeless," Lieutenant Kara Thrace told herself as she flopped down on her back to look at the blue and white planet hanging overhead. The silver disk of its moon was still completely hidden. It wouldn't be visible for a few hours yet.

The Galactica orbited Zodiac with her flat ventral side facing the planet and her dorsal gun batteries facing deep space. Twenty of the fleet ships were in the tight orbit with them. The other twenty were further out, about level with the moon. The Galactica's course took them over both of Zodiac's poles every twelve hours. They had just passed the equator and were headed south … or north. The geophysicists hadn't yet decided which was which.

She had an excellent view of the entire length of the Galactica. The long black gouges from the Judgment Day nuclear explosion still scarred the port landing pod, and there were dozens of new dents as well as a dark empty hole where one of the starboard Tylium tanks used to be. Since Galactica had attracted most of the bullets over the last three years, she was the most beat up ship in the Fleet. But she was built to take it and hold together. When the other ships had been hit, they'd simply blown apart. They'd lost ten that way and thousands of people.

On a solitary prowling expedition about a year after Kara had transferred onto the Galactica, and long before the Cylon Judgment War, she'd found this abandoned observation box that had once been used to direct cannon fire. Although the Galactica's ventral guns had been removed at least twenty years ago, the observation box was still there and Kara used it when she wanted to be alone. She took her occasional lovers other places; this one was just for her. Usually the small empty compartment with a hatch on one side and the scratched translucent plastek everywhere else felt like flying a Viper, close to the velvet black of space and the stars. But here above Zodiac it felt more like a springboard at a swimming pool, as if she could take a dive off the Galactica right into the atmosphere.

Zodiac was going to be humanity's new home, but from what Lee told Kara about the committee's secret plans and his own intentions, it wouldn't be his. And if it wasn't Lee's, it wouldn't be hers either. Where Lee went, so went Kara. That's the way it always would be, right up to the end, and if Kara had her way, beyond.

"Lee's not only married, he's your boss," Kara muttered. Unzipping the chest pocket of the flight suit she still wore -- it was cold in the observation box -- she brought out a crested man's ring and turned it so she could see in Zodiac's light the mantling phoenix insignia and Lee's graduation year.

When their fistfight had ended almost two years ago Serena had tried to drag Lee away, but he'd shaken her off; and giving Kara his hand, he'd pulled her up in one easy motion. "Are we going to be friends now?" he'd asked. His bruised eye had already begun to swell.

Kara had started the fight, by accusing him of being a spoiled and arrogant bastard among other things, so it had been a fair question. She'd answered, "Just try to get rid of me." It had sounded a little honky because she'd been holding her aching broken nose.

"Good. I've missed you, Starbuck." After they'd shared an all too brief comradely hug, he'd walked away, his pretty wife fluttering around him like some excitable exotic bird. Only when Kara turned to leave the empty compartment had she seen Lee's ring lying on the deck. She'd picked it up, intending to return it the next time she saw him. Somehow she never had. Not yet. Sometime. Eventually, when she didn't need it anymore.

She brought the ring to her lips and kissed it. She took it on every mission and patrol. Kara told the ring, "Not only is Lee my boss, he's an Adama. If I touch him, he'll catch my curse, just like Zak." That's how it felt sometimes, that she'd cursed Lee's younger brother.

She'd been Zak's flight instructor and he'd been the forbidden fruit that tastes all the sweeter. Zak should have failed the flight school and been permanently grounded for pure lack of flying talent, but she'd passed him. Lee had blamed his father Commander Adama for pulling strings to get him assigned to a Viper squadron. But it had been Kara's fault; she'd killed Zak.

It was a secret truth that had haunted Kara for two years until she'd finally told Lee right before the great battle at Ragnar. She'd thought for sure they'd all die, and she didn't want him to hate his father anymore. But after they'd made it through the battle intact, Lee had hated her.

Kara still hadn't told the Commander her secret, and as far as she could tell, neither had Lee, a kindness for which she was deeply thankful. To have that wise old man repudiate her would be too much to bear.

Sitting up, Kara put the ring back in its pocket then pulled the lid off the paper cup of hot coffee she'd brought with her. After taking a sip of the brown liquid she made a face. They hadn't yet found a decent caf. substitute on Zodiac. Give them time, she told herself. All good things take time and it's only been a few days.

All in all, Kara felt that she'd lived a good life considering how it started in the Caprican slums, her born the seventh of thirteen children. After the devastating first Cylon war, official Colonial policy had encouraged large families and the government had paid her unmarried mother a subsidy for each child. Mother's many boyfriends had drunk more than half of that away. The remainder hadn't been much to live on, and petty thievery had landed Kara in Go-lol Prison in her sixteenth year. Her mother had said "good riddance" and the judge had taken exception to the sassy little thief. Kara still remembered the five months she'd spent at Go-lol. She'd liked the almost daily fistfights and regular food. The barren walls, the metal bars and the lack of privacy had been too much like home to be a problem. Kara had always found Galactica's brig comfortable. It held no fear.

The Go-lol prison counselor had seen something worth saving in the wild blonde child and had arranged to commute Kara's sentence to a four-year hitch in the Colonial fleet. She'd worked her way up through the ranks to pilot school, which is where she'd met Lee Adama and through Lee his brother Zak. It had been a long and odd trip from slums to space, but one she'd never regretted. She never looked back either. She hadn't seen or heard from her mother or any of her sisters or brothers for ten years. They hadn't really been a family. They'd been strangers sharing a house. Now they were all gone. Dead but not buried. Ashes and bones scattered across a dead planet.

Frak, she was morbid tonight.

The coffee gone, Kara carefully replaced the lid and set the paper cup aside. She'd been using this particular cup for three months. After it was gone there'd be no more and the galley frowned on crew carrying away the regular table service, mostly because there was so little of it left. Everything breakable had been shattered long ago in one battle or another.

Being around Lee was a little like being around Zak. Not the temperament, of course. Lee was all hard angles and straight lines in his thinking. Zak had been … fuzzy, soft and warm. He'd almost been hers.

For a few brief months Kara had felt part of a real family. Kara had lived with them, vacationed with them, and later when Zak had died, even cried with them. The Adamas were her true family and always would be. Maybe that's why Kara loved Lee.

But she could never tell him that. Revealing secrets had always gotten Kara in the worst kind of trouble. She planned to keep this one forever.

These past few days it had been Lee who was keeping secrets from Kara. He'd hinted that the Galactica wasn't going to be staying here at Zodiac and would leave on a critical mission in ten days, but he hadn't explained much else. As they'd gone over the pilot roster together, the reasons he'd given for his rankings had been suggestive -- that one is married, this one has a girlfriend, that one is just a boy. They'd ended up with Keener ranked first and Miffler last. Miffler was a decent Viper pilot, but he was just twenty and already engaged to be married.

Lee didn't expect to come back from this mission. He was expecting to die. If he died, so would she.

Kara had few regrets in her life. Zak, of course, that was the big one. And she really should have gone back to the old neighborhood at least once to make sure that it was really as bad as she remembered. And over the years, she'd been in a few Pyramid games where she should have followed her instincts and bet the house. But then she would have won a fortune, stayed planet-side … and later been killed in the Judgment.

She had no children and didn't want any -- she'd had her fill of family life during her early years on Caprica -- but occasionally she found herself looking at Lee Adama and wishing that things could have been different, that Lee hadn't married Serena or that she'd been brave enough to say how much she loved him when it could have made a difference. It certainly wouldn't now.

Standing up, Kara grabbed her empty cup and opened the hatch into the deserted passageway. Very few people made it to this part of the ship. There was little here to hold their interest. She stepped out and closed the hatch behind her. It was time to go to bed. Tomorrow would come too soon, and the only really good thing about it would be Lee.


	3. Chapter 2

Even before Commander William Adama stepped through the hatch of Galactica's wardroom he knew what the men and women gathered around the long conference table had been talking about:  him, or more precisely, him and President Roslin and whether they'd reached an agreement.

Roslin had still been too sick from her latest round of treatment to participate on the committee, but she was still President.  The emergency Senate had made Adama second in line of succession.  He did what was necessary to hold the government together, but no more.  Besides this was clearly going to be a military operation and thus well within his venue.  He had asked the President's approval more out of politeness than real legal necessity under the provisional government's emergency rules.

Adama had spent last evening at the President's sickbay bedside.  It had been hard for him to argue with the white husk of a woman.  She treasured life like no one else he'd ever met -- his no less than her own and he had seen the hurt in her eyes as he explained the committee's plan and its probable outcome.  But for better or for worse, this morning she'd agreed with him.  He'd prevailed, more because he was right than anything else.  Human kind would never be truly safe until every Cylon was a pile of rusted out parts.

"Attention on deck," someone demanded.  Ten pairs of worn out ship boots hit the deck in a raucous symphony of dull thuds and scraping chairs as everyone in uniform rose to rigid attention, eyes forward, looking at nothing, trying to think nothing.  Even the three civilians sat up straighter although their worry-wrinkle bracketed eyes tracked Adama's progress across the compartment as though he were the man-eating World Snake foretold in the Sacred Scrolls and they were his chosen prey.

Adama couldn't quite get a grasp on their fear.  All the civilians would live.  Only Colonial soldiers would die, and they'd all seen plenty of death over the last three years.  Perhaps the civilians didn't want any more, even though they'd all agreed it couldn't be avoided.  A few would risk almost certain death so the rest could live.  The Cylon home world had to be destroyed.

Forcing himself to walk slowly and steadily, Adama took his place at the head and said, "At ease, and be seated."  He sat down, poured a glass of recycled water and downed the whole foul-tasting thing in three swallows.  His mouth had been as dry as space -- the old fight-or-flight reaction, but he couldn't do either just yet.  He had to tell them the President's choice and they had to finish their plan.  "President Roslin asked me to tell you how proud she is of your work.  She looked it over last night and …" Taking a deep breath, he carefully said the words, "it's a go, ladies and gentlemen."

Adama tried to meet the eyes of everyone at the table with calm reassurance, but he was a father first, and out of the corner of his eye he watched his son Lee, sitting to his right on the far side of his executive officer Colonel Tigh and navigator Lieutenant Gaeta.  For long seconds Lee stared at his father with his lips pulled tightly into a pained grimace, then the expressive young face stilled, and Adama could see Lee's mind turn inward.

When presented with an insoluble dilemma, Lee buried it inside and let it eat his heart out.  He'd done the same thing when his brother Zak had died five years ago, and two years later his mother in the Judgment.  And Adama knew Lee was having marriage problems, which would only add to the pain and confusion.  Fathers always know things like that.  Right now, the only help Adama could give was a little time for recovery.  Putting on his reading glasses, he nodded at the woman to his left.  "Doctor Massinger, could you possibly go first?"

The blonde civilian geophysicist had been staring at the hands she'd clenched around an empty cup.  Hearing her name, the scientist twitched upright and looked at Adama with a puffy red face that was on the brink of tears.  Before even trying to speak, she rubbed her eyes, pinched her nose, and took several trembling breaths.  "I'm sorry, Commander.  My son signed on as one of your Viper pilots six months ago.  He said he wanted to do something important with his life.  I just … I guess I was hoping you'd come up with another plan."

Adama wanted to say, _So did I_, but stayed silent.  This was no time to be either human or humane.  Holding on to a non-committal smile, he waited for her to continue.

She picked up a small notebook and thumbed it open.  "If we can't make it to Earth, G89 is about the best alternative we're likely to find.  Weather extremes exist, of course, but the atmosphere is breathable, the ionosphere is stable, the seas adequate for rainfall generation, at least some of the flora is safe to eat, and the fauna … well, the fauna …"  The doctor actually smiled, although her lips wavered at the corners.  "Some of them are awfully big by our standards, but they're also edible, as you already know."

One of the first things that exploration parties to Zodiac had brought back to the fleet had been fresh meat.  Just two of the planet's horned and scaled monsters had yielded three tons of white flesh.  It hadn't been beef-steak by any stretch of the imagination, but still tasty and natural protein unlike the synthesized mud they'd been eating.  For the first time since the battle at Ragnar, they'd been able to lift the food rationing.  There'd been food parties on every ship, and people had eaten themselves sick.  On the next trip the scout ship had brought back two more of them.  Butchering animals as big as Vipers had been a real trick, but somehow Cook had managed.  He'd only asked for an extra ration of shower water afterwards.

Massinger continued, "It's a young world, by our standards.  Just two billion years old, but meteorology, virology, everything looks good.  We'll make it here, Commander Adama.  My team has picked a primary building site where the Roslin River feeds into the largest saline sea and three secondary ones on the two other continents.  Temperate climate, apparently stable land masses -- they're the best we could find."  Talking about hope and the future had raised the doctor's spirits.  Her face had lost its flush and when she looked to the man to her left, she almost grinned.  "If Bart here's ready, so are we."

Adama nodded.  "Thank you, doctor.  The Galactica will help as much as it can before we leave.  Captain Barthmelent, I believe you have a landing schedule?"

And so it went around the table, each man or woman picking up a pile of paper, a notebook or a model and explaining the future, everything from how they planned to hide the carcasses of the remaining forty starships from prying, spying eyes; to the health status of the forty thousand surviving human beings; to the battle-readiness of the Galactica and if she really could make the required FTL jumps to the Cylon home world.  Adama hadn't realized there was so much paper left in the entire fleet.  Paper and paperwork had survived every battle and Cylon attack.  It just refused to go away.

They'd been through the plans already once, but only in theory, testing and arguing each idea.  This time they were setting it in place.  Those not speaking took notes.  They were planning not only the salvation of the human race but also the deaths of two hundred and twelve volunteers.  More than a few hands shook as they wrote.

Gunnery Officer Gibson reported on the ordnance that the Galactica would leave with the new colony -- one thousand mixed rifles and side arms and ten tons of small caliber ammunition, about two-thirds of what was left.  The Galactica only needed the fifty-oughts for her dorsal batteries, the twelve-oughts for the Vipers and maybe five hundred rounds of nine millimeter for the penetration party.

And of course, one asteroid, but Gibson wouldn't have one of those in his armory.

They'd reached the far end of the table.  Adama thought, _If I'm the supposed spiritual father of this frakkin' table full of fools_,_ then surely this woman's the mother._  Commander Doctor Elena Lighter of the research ship Paracelsus had been one of the most renowned geneticists of the Twelve Colonies.  She was also a loyal Colonial soldier and Adama's friend.  "Commander Lighter, your report on the legacy project?"

The brown-skinned woman nodded and stood up.  Bending over to pick something up from the deck, she hauled a dark-green twelve-liter glass jar onto the table, thumping it down next to a short stack of yellow and blue cards.

Lighter said, "We're going to set up two hundred of these.  As Captain Silliams told you, the Paracelsus will land intact at the primary site, be buried and continue to function as the hospital and the in vitro crèche."  Lighter's fingers played along the jar's smooth rim.  "Commander Adama, I really wish you'd reconsider and exclude the young women.  We have only ten thousand fertile females as it is and growing babies in glass jars is hardly an exact science."

Adama shook his head.  He and Lighter had been over similar ground countless times in the last three days.  "All of my crewmen are equally valuable whatever gonads they're packing around, and if this mission has any hope of succeeding, I'll need the best."  The scientist looked like she had another protest in her so Adama tried to beat her to it.  "No one will go that doesn't want to, Lights, they'll all be volunteers, both the men and the women.  And don't forget, this is just a precaution.  We're going to do our best to make it back alive."

_Yeah, right,_ Commander Lighter's eyes said.  _No one believes you'll be back, not even you.  That's why you're only taking volunteers, remember?_  "It just would be such a waste, Bill, more than two hundred of our finest men and women."

Adama couldn't let that pass unchallenged.  "No one knows that better than me.  They're my people.  All of them."

The men and women around the table had calmed as they'd listened to the hope-filled colony plans, but Lighter's impassioned pleading had rekindled the earlier fear.  Even the Galactica senior officers on right side of the table, Captain Kelly, Lee, Colonel Tigh and Lieutenant Gaeta, looked uneasy.  Adama had to pull them back.  "Is there anything else you need to tell us, Commander?"

Lighter had begun to sit down.  She straightened back up.  "You know the rest of it.  It's the same as yesterday.  As soon as you announce our plan, we'll be looking for fifty or sixty couples to foster your babies.  I've set up a collection lab down in your sickbay and …" she picked up the stack of colored cards "… I've taken the liberty of making up the match cards.  I'll hand them out as I do the blood tests and gather the sperm and eggs.  Just make sure all the volunteers come see me so I can make your babies for you.  No one wants to lose their legacy."

"Don't worry, they'll donate or they won't go."

Before Adama could call on someone else, a knock sounded at the wardroom's hatch.  It was a cart from the galley with a lunch of sandwiches and what they still called coffee, although it resembled that beverage only in color and caffeine kick.  It was time for a break.

As Adama turned to speak with Colonel Tigh, he saw his son leave.  He already knew where Lee was going, and even if he didn't entirely approve, it was Lee's choice as the Air Group Commander.  He'd soon be back.


	4. Chapter 3

One of the bad things about living on a battlestar was the hull.  It forced every passageway to eventually curve back on itself or dead-end.  There were days when Kara ached for a straight-line distance that she could run until she was so far from the beginning there'd be no going back, and so far from Lee that she didn't love him anymore.  If that were possible.

Lee was behind the pilot briefing room podium telling them the committee's plan.  As he spoke, his voice shook around the edges and his eyes kept wandering away from the audience to the floor, the overhead, and the bulkheads.  To Kara it was obvious that only Lee's commitment to the Fleet and his uniform were holding him together and the uniform looked sadly frayed.  No wonder he hadn't told her the details.

Except for High Card and Rat Frak who were flying the current patrol and listening on the wireless, Kara had assembled every Viper pilot on Galactica in the pilot briefing room.  Those who couldn't sit in the chairs reclined on the deck or like Kara leaned against the back bulkhead.  Even Slinger who'd been in sickbay for a week recovering from a bout of pneumonia had been carted in with an oxygen tank after he'd called Kara and insisted that it was his right.  Only the Lords knew for sure how he'd heard.

"The Commander will be making the same announcement to everyone else in a few hours," Lee had said, "but I wanted you to know first.  I'm sorry I don't have time for questions."  He'd been firing off words faster than a Viper cannon.  "But I'd like to be able to tell the Commander where we stand."

A thin young man, so white blond and fair he looked like a Picon Winter Wraith, Kara thought his name was Gregory, stood up.  "I say we send a message back with Captain Adama.  Let's tell the Commander we're all in it.  Raise your hand if you're in."  Gregory's hand shot up immediately as he looked at the other pilots.  Around the compartment every hand went up.  Not all of them quickly, it's true, but every one of them went in the air -- even Slinger in his wheelchair.  Over the wireless High Card and Rat Frak swore their hands were raised.

Lee's shoulders bowed and his head hung for a moment, as though a great burden had suddenly been placed on his back and he needed a moment to adjust, but when his head came back his eyes were shiny and all he said was, "Thank you.  Thank you.  I'll tell him.  He'll be proud of you."  Everyone in the room knew that Commander Adama had started his military career as a Viper pilot.  They felt a personal connection with their Commander, and Kara believed he felt the same with them.

Kara caught up with Lee just outside the hatch and matched his hurried stride down the nearly empty passageway.  It was mid-watch and few people were about.  "Lee, you have a minute?"

Lee didn't look like he had even a second, but he smiled and said, "Sure.  Why don't you walk with me?"  He was really running more than walking.  At the first intersection, they dodged left down a side passage to bypass a section that had been breached a year ago and was no longer airtight.  It was completely deserted here.  "What do you need?"

Babies didn't matter to Kara, but she knew they mattered to Lee, to the whole Adama family for that matter.  Back when she'd been dating Zak, they'd never quite worked out their baby issues.  "Tell me more about our baby legacy.  We'll have five each?"  Not a big family by Colonial standards, but a respectable beginning.

However, from what Lee had said, for volunteers most likely it would be both their beginning and their end.

Lee glanced at her.  He was probably surprised at her interest.  Babies weren't Kara's thing.  She'd made no secret about that when she'd been dating Zak.  But she hadn't really been unwilling; it'd been more like she'd needed lots of convincing.  At least, that's what she always told herself.  Lee said, "For the women, whatever eggs are harvested, most of them will have four to six.  The men up to five.  Lighter's hoping for five hundred babies in all."

"Serena must be very happy that she'll finally have a family."  Motherhood was going to catch up with Galactica's wicked witch.  Kara wanted to laugh her head off.  She tried to keep it down to a polite snicker.  "At least she can't keep her legs crossed anymore."

Lee stopped so quickly Kara was several steps down the passageway before she realized that she'd left him behind.  "That was uncalled for, Kara."

Uh-oh.  She'd gone too far again.  Kara was always doing that with Lee.  It was one of the hazards of caring too much about what happened to him, but now wasn't the time to back down and make nice.  In a week they were all going to die destroying the Cylon home world.  Lee had just said so.  "Uncalled for?  Why?  Because Serena won't sleep with you?  Everyone knows that."

Lee's face closed down and his ridiculously square jaw tucked into his chest in a defensive movement.  She'd hit him where he lived, where they all lived.

This time Kara had gone so far she was out in orbit, but she wasn't going to stop.  Not now.  She was going to tell him the truth.  "Serena doesn't deserve you, Lee.  She's the luckiest woman in the universe and she doesn't even know it."

Lee's eyes searched hers a moment then he looked away.  "If there's nothing else, Lieutenant Thrace, I have to go now.  I'm late."

She nodded, "Of course.  Let me know if you need backup."  She'd blown that into space.  Sometimes she was just so stupid.

Watching Lee's back disappear down the passageway as he jogged away, Kara murmured, "I'm sorry, Lee.  I didn't mean it."  He was too far away to hear.  Nothing ever changed between her and Lee.  No matter how much she loved him, it was always too little and too late.

.

Across the room from the group gathered around the lunch cart, Colonel Tigh murmured for Adama's ears only, "Bill, can I talk to you a minute?"

Lee hadn't returned yet, so Adama nodded.  "What's up, Paul?"

"Uh, I can't talk Gaeta out of going.  He insists that we won't have a chance of getting home without him to navigate."  The Colonel's lips pressed together in a wry smile before he continued, "He's says I'm an okay navigator, but he's a lot better."  Unfortunately, it was the truth.

"Have you explained we probably won't have a chance even with him?  He may never see that new baby of his."  Gaeta's wife Melinda was seven months pregnant with their second child.

"He knows, Sir.  It's a matter of honor.  He doesn't want to be left behind."

"I understand."  As the Colonel started to turn away, Adama added, "Make sure Gaeta gets a double progeny allotment, give him and his wife ten legacy babies if Lights will let you.  He's a good man, and his kids should have a lot more sisters and brothers.  And Colonel …" Adama looked into Tigh's battle-weary gray eyes, "…you bastard, you too.  Even us crazy old farts should have a share.  Remember what they used to tell us after the first war."

"Yeah, I remember: 'If war is hell, a big family is heaven.'  I will."  The Colonel shook his head in disbelief.  "Imagine, me a father at last.  That's damned close to a miracle."

Adama chuckled.  "Tell me about it."  Even Adama would have his share in the legacy project.  Commander Lighter had insisted on it.

After giving the committee members another fifteen minutes to eat and take care of business, Adama told Chief Gibson to flick the room lights a couple of times to call them back to order; and with a last visit to the coffee pot, the men and women slowly migrated back to the table.

At the last possible second Lee stepped back through the hatch.  As he walked behind his father on the way to his chair, he muttered between one gasping breath and the next, "One hundred percent."

Adama's eyes flicked toward Lee but he acknowledged the information in no other way.  He knew what those three words meant.  One hundred percent of the Viper pilots had volunteered to go, Lee included.  And Kara.  Although he'd expected that, it still hurt like hell.  First Zak then Lee.  And even Kara too.  He must be some kind of monster to kill his own children.  Adama swallowed hard and gave himself a count of five to calm down.

"Colonel Tigh," he said.  "I believe you, Lieutenant Gaeta and Captain Adama have a report."

The Colonel picked up a short printout.  "The first three ships to land on Zodiac will be ripping out their inertia regulators for us.  That's uh … " he looked at the paper " … oh, frak.  I can't tell which ships that'll be.  Barthmelent there knows.  Anyway, they'll shuttle 'em back up to us.  As for the rest of it …"  As Colonel Tigh kept talking, Adama's mind wandered through a gray garden of memories, the good, the bad and the merely painful.  He knew Tigh's whole report anyway.  He'd helped write it.

Then it was time for Lee and his plans for the mission that would most likely kill him.

Referring to a clipboard holding his pilot roster, Lee said, "I have twelve more pilot volunteers than I have battle-ready Vipers.  I'll need one to pilot the Squadron Raptor and another to work its electronics suite, so that cuts me back to ten extra.  Lieutenant Thrace and I have been working out a list of our best and most experienced.  I think we'll have a final list for you by tonight, Commander."

Adama mentally shook away his misery and took command.  "Make that nine extra men, Captain.  We'll need a man to fly in the penetration party -- your very best.  It's not going to be easy to fly like a Cylon."  Lee would know whom he had in mind.

He did.  "I'll talk to Lieutenant Thrace about it, Sir.  I think she'd probably rather be in a Viper, but if that's where you want her, I'm sure she'll do it.  She'll just need to log a few hours of practice in that frakkin' monster."

"See that she gets it.  Be sure to warn CIC and try to keep the blasted thing out of sight on the far side of Zodiac's moon or something.  We don't want a trigger happy gunner to shoot her out of the sky."  Lee nodded and made a note.

Colonel Tigh spoke up.  "Can I see that roster, Captain?"  As he took Lee's clipboard, Tigh looked across the table at the geophysicist Massinger, who'd been quietly listening for most of the morning, although now and then a tear rolled down her cheek.  After completely soaking her handkerchief, the Doctor had started using one of the napkins from the lunch cart to wipe her eyes and nose.  "What's your son's name, ma'am?" Tigh asked.

The doctor looked surprised.  "Gregory.  Gilbert Gregory.  His father and I are … were divorced."

Tigh scanned down the roster; and picking up a pencil from the table, he drew a straight line across the page.  Handing the clipboard back to Lee, he told him, "There's one less for you, Captain."

Taking the board, Lee looked at the name crossed out and nodded.  "Sure, Sir.  One down, eight to go."  Massinger started crying in earnest.

Adama smiled slightly.  As far as he knew, the Colonel hadn't had a single drink in two years, partly because it was both hard to get and illegal and partly from self-control.  Paul had changed and only for the better.  "You're one surprising son of a bitch," Adama whispered to his old friend.

.

Elena Lighter had known William Adama since their Academy days.  Back then no matter what the deviltry, Adama had always been out in the forefront, an instinctive leader as well as being brave to the point of stupidity.  She'd seen him and Paul Tigh pull off air-cycle acrobatics that vid. stunt men wouldn't have dared.

But this would be Adama's craziest stunt yet, attacking the Cylon home planet.  More than likely it would get him and a lot of other people killed and he knew it.  She could tell from the stillness in his hands and the quickness in his eyes.

One of Elena's own hands went to the bottle that still rested on the floor beside her chair.  The baby legacy had been her idea, born out of her desperation to keep the gene pool as broad as possible as well as their shortage of fertile women, but Adama had picked up on it immediately.  He'd liked the idea that he and his volunteers could leave something of themselves to participate in the new world.  She could only assume that it also eased a little of his guilt for condemning so many people to almost certain death.

Elena hoped that she could bring all the babies to full term.  Even back on Caprica the in-vitro process had been still fairly new and here on this pioneer world, all sorts of things could happen.  She'd promised Bill five hundred babies over two years.  The reality would probably be somewhat less.

Bill's son Lee and Paul Tigh were discussing the Viper pilot roster -- who'd go and who'd stay behind.  That must be one of Bill's deepest pains: that the baby boy he'd once cradled in his arms was going to die with him.  Elena had lost all of her family in the Judgment -- her husband, both of her grown daughters and her three grandchildren.  Now, three years later, whenever she thought about them, it still hurt like a knife wound in the gut.  That pain would never die, but she went on with dogged determination.  Babies had always her business and she still had a lot of work to do.

Bill stood up.  "I think that's enough for today.  Why don't you all go start pulling this show together?  Just get back here tomorrow at oh-eight-hundred."  He beckoned to his son to stay behind and while he talked a moment with him, Elena waited patiently standing a few chairs away, discussing with Captain Silliam possible burial strategies for Paracelsus's new home on Zodiac.

Over Silliam's shoulder, Elena watched an angry disagreement quietly play out between Bill and his son, both of them so controlled their voices never rose above a whisper.  Finally, Lee turned abruptly on his heel and left.  Silliam looked after the departing back and said, "Excuse me.  I need to arrange pilots with Captain Adama."  He trotted off as well.

Bill stared at the hatch where his son had disappeared until Elena cleared her throat with the traditional two-beat cough then he turned towards her with an apology.  "Sorry to keep you waiting, Lights," he said.  "What can I do for you?"

"When can I start lining up foster parents?" she asked him.  After Bill's argument with his son, he'd probably see the question as both mundane and pointless, but she needed to know.  "We should start while everyone's still shipboard.  They're going to get pretty scattered after landing and not everyone will have wireless access."

"Not yet," Bill said.  "I'm going to tell my crew in a couple of hours, and Laura and I'll put out the general announcement in the morning.  Why don't you shoot for tomorrow evening?  Give 'em a chance to think about what it all means?"  He looked distracted, his eyes focused inward rather than on her.  Bill and his son always seemed uncomfortable with one another.  He was probably replaying the argument in his mind.

"Sure.  Sounds good," Elena said.  Then without letting herself think about it, she wrapped her arms around Bill in a tight hug and said, "Frak you, you old fool."  Nuzzling his neck and she repeated herself more quietly in his ear, "Frak you," then pulled back to look into his eyes.  Although they'd never acted on it, there'd always been an attraction between them, even when they'd been married to others.  Elena hoped Bill would understand her offer.

Bill understood perfectly.  "Me too.  Anytime you want," he murmured and kissed her cheek.  Stepping away, he continued more loudly for the benefit of the half dozen other people still in the compartment, "Hey, old girl.  We all have to do what the Lords give us.  You do your job and I'll do mine."


	5. Chapter 4

"It looks just like Caprica," Serena said.  Lee smiled at the child-look of wonder on her face.  The beautiful blue, green and white ball that he'd been seeing every day from his Viper cockpit hung in space before them.  And it did resemble the Galactica's old home planet, at least from this height.

Everyone in the packed shuttlecraft was looking in the same direction as Serena.  "There's a rain storm, I'll bet," said an older woman as she gestured at a thick white cloud mass drifting across the dark green of a continent toward the terminator that divided day from night.  A man and woman were pointing out the white polar caps to a little girl who looked no older than six and who probably remembered only the insides of crowded starships and nothing of the comfortable world where she had been born.

The view in the other direction was almost as spectacular.  To the galactic north, the fan-shaped Slasenger Nebula painted a pink and orange dance of light across the sky.  Nothing Cylon worked quite right in there.  Unfortunately the nebula was also hard on humans and starships, but it would form a fence of sorts.

All over the cabin fingers pointed this way and that.  Every face looked reverent and, best of all, hopeful.  Optimism had been a long time coming, but had blossomed at last.  Humanity had a future and its name was Zodiac.  With plentiful food and water, and even weather, it would be the Ninth Heaven for a travel weary humanity.

Lee felt like he owned the planet or had personally discovered it, although that honor belonged to the astrometrics team up in CIC.  But as a soldier sworn to defend his people, their home belonged to him in a very special, personal way.

Putting an arm around his wife, Lee bent forward and pointed out their destination, a spot halfway down a long coast where a huge river mouth carved a notch.  The geophysicists had finally settled on the larger of the two polar ice caps as north, and that made it the east coast of the Alpha Continent -- what some of the more religious were already calling Koboland.

Serena accepted Lee's explanations with wide-eyed awe, reminding him of the child woman he'd married two years before.  He almost wished that she'd throw one of her famous tantrums.  It would have made what he had to do easier, but gathering up his worn-out emotions and taking Serena's hand, he gave it a go.  "I won't be staying with you on Zodiac."

She glanced sideways at him, reluctant to look away from the planet.  "Of course, you won't, darling.  You haven't packed up yet, but I'll have our love nest set up by the time you get back."  Her eyes returned to the front canopy window where details like mountain ranges and lakes were becoming visible even to the untrained eye.

"Please look at me," Lee asked.  He could have said goodbye on the Galactica and let Serena fly down with her circle of friends, but it hadn't felt right.  And neither would it be right to take her to the new settlement only to suddenly say, "Oh, by the way, you're on your own now."  She had to know.  He'd put off telling her as long as possible and he was about to pay the price.

With a sigh of irritation Serena looked at him.  "Yes?" she said, raising both the pitch of her voice and her eyebrows to indicate a question.

Lee spoke slowly and steadily to make sure that she understood.  "Serena, I'm going to leave with the Galactica.  I may never come back."  He'd planned to say next, "I know you need me, but my father needs me more," and if she started crying, maybe even, "I love you," but he didn't get a chance.  Serena had leapt to her feet.

"You're what?" she yelped loudly.  The eyes of everyone in the shuttle left the planet and turned to her.  "You can't leave me!  I'll … I'll divorce you!  Yes, that's what I'll do!  I'll divorce you!"

Dragging Serena behind him, Captain Lee Adama marched down the dirt path leading away from the open field the settlers euphemistically called the spaceport.  Serena protested his rough treatment in squawks only slightly less raucous than the scaled, bird-like creatures overhead, but he ignored her.  Lee was angry, very angry.

A hand-lettered piece of white packing foam nailed to a massive fern-like plant proclaimed the path to be Colonial Boulevard and that Salvation City was one klick away.  Plant fronds arched overhead, blocking out some of the day's too warm sun.  White, pink and yellow cascades of flowers hung from still larger, tree-like plants, making the forest resemble the tropical arboretum on Sagittaria's south continent, which was a beautiful, wild and unspoiled piece of paradise, or at least it had been before Judgment Day.

Three of the ten starships designated for this site's temporary living quarters had been landed, but so far only one was buried.  The new colonists had been having trouble with a large and apparently territorial fauna -- half-ton eight-legged creatures some wag had named frakkin' farters after their main weapon, a truly horrible stench.  Fortunately the smell dissipated quickly and the farters were easy to intimidate, although they definitely would never be a food source.

After three years of Galactica's climate-controlled environment, the burning sunshine felt good to Lee.  This visit would be his only chance to check out Zodiac and he was soaking in every shade of color as well as the mixed natural perfumes of crushed chlorophyll and disturbed soil.  The planet was humanity's new home and it was good.

The two large duffle bags Lee carried over his shoulder held everything Serena considered necessary to survive.  He'd originally come to settle her in and say a last goodbye, but her tantrum on the shuttle had changed that and now Lee had something else in mind.  But he had only one hour until the shuttle returned to Galactica.  He'd have to hurry.

"Lee, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean it.  Really I didn't.  I just don't want any babies.  I'm not good with them.  You know that.  Please, Lee."  Serena's whining was reaching truly annoying proportions and attracting the attention of the dozen or so people within earshot.

Lee had had enough.  He pulled his wife off the path to stand under a huge spray of creamy white blossoms that resembled a bridal veil.  Fragrant petals floated through the air.  "Serena, you just announced to everyone on that shuttle you want a divorce.  Do you really expect me to hold you back?  You don't want my babies; you don't even want to foster my legacy babies.  You haven't slept with me for six months.  All you can think about is what you want and what you need.  I'm going to give you that divorce right here and now because frankly I don't need you anymore.  I don't even want you."

It wasn't like Lee had years to wait for Serena to grow up.  He had one week, actually six and half days before the Galactica cut off all ground communication.  He didn't want Serena hanging around his neck.  Not anymore.  His life had become way too short and he had other things to think about, for one, planning humanity's last great battle with the Cylons.  And Serena always landed on her feet like a spider cat.  Despite that little girl innocent demeanor, she knew exactly whom to kiss up to and how, and since they were leaving, probably forever, it wasn't going to be Commander Adama and his son anymore.  By setting her free, Lee really was doing her a kindness.

Or so he told himself.

Serena had sufficient humanity left to look abashed, even ashamed.  "I'm sorry," she said.  Then some of her old self came through and she reiterated her complaints.  "But you wouldn't even tell me about this frakkin' mission of yours.  I heard about it on the wireless broadcast, for Lords' sake!  Please, you don't have to go, Lee.  Your father won't make you."  Lee knew better than to think Serena was worried about him.  She just didn't want to be left on her own.

A passerby lugging a tiny baby and a single small satchel -- a former gunners' mate third by her Colonial insignia -- watched them curiously but snapped her eyes away when Lee glared back.  One of the things he truly hated about being the Commander's son was the complete lack of anonymity, every single person on all forty ships knew who he was.  Or maybe it was the Viper patch on his shoulder.  Since his father had announced the committee's plan, most people looked at the Viper pilots askance, as if wondering how they could just choose to throw their lives away.  A few civilian colonists had even dared to come up and hug him.

"My father doesn't make me do anything, Serena.  I make me.  Now come on.  We're going to end this and if I know you, you'll have another husband by sundown."

Serena deigned to walk at Lee's side the rest of the way to the main square.  White flowers had fallen into her dark curly hair, setting off her peaches and cream complexion and the baby blue eyes.  She looked completely fresh, feminine and charming, like a wood nymph.  Male eyes were following her even though she walked with Lee.

Most of the traffic on Colonial Boulevard moved in their same direction, into the new city.  Ahead or behind them walked a dozen or so couples lugging their life's possessions in small bags, as well as assorted other individuals, many of whom towed children.  They were all here to stay.  Lee was the only one returning and he had only a little over a half hour now.  Four burly men passed them headed for the spaceport, carrying among them a large machine, probably the buried starship's inertia regulator for shipping back up to the Galactica.  Given their importance to a starship's flight control, the regulators were amazingly small.

"This has to be quick," Lee said as they reached a patch of open ground with a view of the nearby sea.  A cool onshore breeze softened the heat of the sun.  Temporary tents surrounded the open space and playing children and a few frolicking spider cats raced around like they'd lived on Zodiac all of their lives.  The spider cats loved it here.  Introducing them was probably going to prove an ecological disaster, but no one had suggested leaving them out of the settlement party.  Putting Serena's bags on the ground, Lee held out his hand and ordered, "Give me your wedding ring."

Serena bit her lip, but did as she was told, pulling the tight platinum band off her thumb and dropping it in his proffered palm.

Lee quickly removed his own gold wedding band and handed it to her.  "Now, are you ready for this?  Because if you're not, I swear I'll do it on my own and you'll lose your honor."  A unilateral divorce would be only one step away from calling Serena a whore.

She looked around the bustling square full of human settlers then back at Lee, nodded and held out her hand.  "I'm ready," she said in a tremulous voice.

Lee held Serena's hand in the air and pronounced the first of the three public declarations required for a simple divorce under the new Colonial laws.  "This woman, Serena Woolcott Adama, is no longer my wife."

Serena seemed near to tears, but she said her part.  "This man, Lee Adama, is no longer my husband."  It wasn't very loud, but the nearest onlookers must have heard.

They walked across the square and repeated it.  Several curious people watched them, one of them was a handsome young man with glistening, dark brown skin whose wide disbelieving eyes tracked Serena's every move.

For the last repetition, they stood in the center of the square, looked at each other and said the words in chorus.

It was done.  They were free of each other.  Lee suddenly felt uncomfortable.  He nodded toward a long tent.  "That's probably the barracks there.  You might be able to get a bunk on one of the grounded starships, but I doubt it."  He held out his hand.  "Good luck, Serena.  I have to get back to catch my shuttle."

Serena didn't take the hand.  Tears rolled down her cheeks as she shook her head and looked away.  "The Lords curse you, Adama."

"Sorry you feel that way."  After turning Lee quickly trotted in the direction of the spaceport.  He looked back only just before entering the fern tree forest.  Serena still stood in the middle square next to her bags, but she wasn't alone anymore.  The dark skinned man had joined her, a look of concern on his face.  Lee thought he saw one of Serena's friends on the far side of the open common, hurrying her way.

Serena was going to do just fine, Lee decided.  Just fine.


	6. Chapter 5

Despite his skillful broken field running on Colonial Boulevard, Lee was more than five minutes late getting back to the shuttle. Although the shuttle pilot Lieutenant Merinat Adams, a young recruit and pretty new in her job, wasn't likely to leave behind the CAG, Lee always tried not to take advantage of his rank, and the first thing he gasped when he trotted up was, "Sorry I'm late."

Merinat had been standing with her back to the Boulevard and looking into the shuttle, so Lee was taken completely by surprise when she turned around holding a small, rag-wrapped bundle that could only be a baby. "No prob, Captain. We've been having lots of fun waiting." Pouting her lips, the lieutenant kootchied and cooed for the baby's benefit. "Isn't he adorable?" she asked Lee, tucking a yellow scrap of blanket out of the way to reveal a tiny wrinkled face that was inextricably both ugly and beautiful at the same time.

Lee looked inside the shuttle expecting to see the baby's mother. There were no people, just the inertia regulator equipment. Catching his scan, Merimat explained, "The camp physician brought him out while you were gone. We're supposed to take him to the Galactica for transfer to the Paracelsus. He's a Wind Child." A baby fathered by the wind and born to the rain, a polite name for an unwanted bastard. He'd been disowned by his mother, who had legally divorced her baby by public declaration in the same way that Lee had just divorced his wife. A mother usually limited her declaration to a doctor, a public official and hopefully, but not always, a willing foster parent. Once the practice had been uncommon, but after the President and her Temporary Senate outlawed birth control, it had come back in vogue. It was perfectly legal and perfectly cold-hearted.

Carefully supporting the baby's head, Merinat held out the small bundle. "Could you take him, Captain, so I can start the pre-flight check?"

Lee stood frozen for a second. Him? Hold a baby? "I don't think … that is, I've never …" Realizing that he was floundering, he reluctantly offered both his hands. "I've never held a baby, at least not that I can remember."

Merinat laughed, undoubtedly delighted to discover one of her CAG's weaknesses. "Here I'll show you how."

Lee leaned back in the shuttle seat, a bottle in his hand and the warm bundle of baby boy tucked in the crook of one arm. This was easier than he'd expected. With closed eyes and a peaceful, calm expression the baby was eagerly sucking the yellow protein drink. Merinat had showed Lee how to stop him every once in a while, put him up on a shoulder and make sure he burped. "You're a good baby, you know that?" Lee said as the baby's mouth worked hungrily. "Yes, you are."

_Listen to me_, Lee thought. _I sound like an idiot … or a father._

Lee could have insisted on flying the shuttle, but that wouldn't have been fair to Merinat who deserved the dignity of being allowed to do her job. And he'd wanted some private time to think about what had just happened on Zodiac. It had been a spur of the moment decision to divorce Serena, but it had been the right one. Although he'd known long ago marrying her had been a mistake, it had taken him a long time to find the guts to end the charade.

And Lee wasn't looking forward to telling his father about his sudden decision to part ways with his wife. The Commander would have plenty to say about it. True, he hadn't been very fond of Serena, but he'd done his best to protect her as a favor to a dead friend. For Lee, the next six days were going to be hell in more ways than one.

The sucking had slowed down and Lee decided it was time to try the burping maneuver. Putting one of the baby's scraps of blanket on his shoulder, he gently removed the nipple from the sleepy mouth, and slung the tiny body into place. "You should have a name," Lee said as he rubbed the small back, "or at least a call sign. What do you think of Stinger? That suit you?"

Stinger burped an answer and it sounded like, "Great."

Bringing Stinger back down to the original configuration, Lee wiped the miniature mouth, rewrapped the blanket snuggly and offered the bottle again, but Stinger nodded to himself as though he'd just made a decision, closed his eyes and fell asleep. Lee looked down at the bundle in his arms and tried to remember if he'd held a baby before. He didn't think he'd ever had as an adult. His only real experience with babies had been his brother Zak, his junior by four years. He'd probably held him a few times, but it had been so long ago.

It was strange how much he still missed Zak even after five years. Whenever Lee was in his father's quarters, he always took a moment to look at their old childhood pictures. Sometimes he tried to imagine how Zak might have coped with the Judgment. It always came up, "Not well." Zak had been the closest to their mother, and like her funny, soft and gentle. He hadn't belonged in a military career, but since Zak had been an Adama -- and his father's son at least in stubbornness -- that's all he'd ever considered.

At first Lee had been blamed his father for his brother's death, but he'd been making assumptions. Then Kara had given him the facts, and he'd blamed her. That had been wrong too. She'd only been a lovesick fool following her heart just like he had with Serena. Lee had been wrong all around.

It didn't matter now. Zak was gone. Soon Lee would be too, and there'd be no one to remember or care anymore.

But thanks to Commander Lighter he'd have children. Even if he never saw them and they never knew his face, there'd be children to carry on the Adama bloodline. He'd failed his father in a lot of things, but at least there'd be that.

Stinger moaned a little and changed position. His eyes fluttered. Merinat had suggested a lullaby might help him to sleep, but Lee didn't know the words to many songs and the only one he could think of right now was the Fleet battle hymn. He began to sing it in a quiet voice somewhere between a tenor and a baritone.

Space is where we all belong  
Stars above us and all along.  
Night is short and we have found  
The best place to gather round.

Stinger seemed to like the first stanza, so Lee went for the chorus.

If peace is for every man.  
You and I must take a stand  
And win for our sweet Lords   
Vict'ry, union, and true accord.

His voice trailed off. Stinger was completely quiet once again.

There was something about the baby that reminded Lee of Kara. It hadn't been the eyes, which were closed now anyway. Stinger's were blue and Kara's were green. Or the hair. Stinger had none, and Kara's was an untamed blonde frill that never looked the same from one day to the next. It was some other elusive quality, something indefinite, but still there. Then Lee had it. It was the baby's peaceful trusting look. Occasionally he and Kara had been on the same six-man flight-ready rotation and shared the bunkroom off the launch bay. Kara looked just like Stinger when she was asleep.

Almost asleep himself now, Lee tilted his head back and looked out the view port at the Galactica growing ahead and slightly to the right.

Six days left. Six days.  
  
.

Surrounded by the noise and bustle of the starboard landing pod's hangars where every piece of Galactica useful for the new colony was in the process of being packed up for shipping planet-side, Lee had volunteered to take Stinger down to Commander Lighter in sickbay. The baby would have woken up in a matter of minutes in the hangar and Merinat needed to make another round trip down to Zodiac before her shift ended. As soon as Merinat had disappeared to look for the Launch Officer and her next cargo, he had regretted the hasty offer. "He's not mine. He's a Wind Child," he had told Chief Cally who had been a few feet away staring at him open-mouthed, her black schedule board in her hand.

"Of course, Sir," she had said and had turned back to the carton-crammed hangar.

He'd hurried through the stacked boxes and out of there. In the crowded passageway filled with crewmembers waiting for their ride to Zodiac and through the busy living quarters section, he had walked as fast as he could. Finally he had reached the relative peace and quiet of the ventral levels close to sickbay.

"Ah, Captain Adama! Glad you could make it!" Lighter had said as soon as Lee stepped into the former supply closet she was using as her laboratory. It's where Galactica's doctor had told him to go with the baby in his arms.

One of Lighter's nurse assistants, a black-haired woman with a solid matronly look, had bustled up to take Stinger, saying as she'd turned to go, "What a cute little guy!"

"I've been calling him Stinger. He seems to like it," Lee had called after her. Without the warm baby, his arms had felt cold and empty.

Commander Lighter had crossed Lee's name off a list, then told him to sit down on the examination bench that took up most of the tiny compartment. He'd tried to protest that he'd come down only to drop off the baby and would come back some other time for his legacy donation, but she'd ignored him.

Her examination hadn't taken long, just a quick look down his throat, a check of his pulse, and a body temperature reading from a probe in his ear. After poking him in the arm with a huge needle that looked like an electron blaster and hurt like hell, the Doctor had taken two small vials of blood. In the small room's stringently bright overhead lighting, the blood had looked almost black, like bottled death. Finally, the Doctor had handed Lee a small clear glass jar with a paper lid and said, "Here ya go."

"Here I go?" Lee had asked.

"Yeah. Be my guest." She'd gestured toward the open hatch that led to the sickbay's unisex head. "I think there's a copy of The Way to Love in there, but if you'd like, I can try to run down A Thousand Ways to Make a Baby."

"No thanks," he'd said faintly.

So that's why he was in this tiny white compartment with his pants unzipped trying to think … happy thoughts.

He couldn't bring himself to open the black book that lay on a nearby shelf. No matter what the pictures showed them doing, those men and women were long dead in the Judgment and he couldn't get that out of his mind. It wasn't a happy thought at all.

And as for Serena -- she'd stopped exciting him that way a very long time ago. He didn't really want to think about her now anyway. That would completely kill the mood.

"Frak," Lee muttered, then he groaned and thought, _Precisely_. Unless he wanted to spend the rest of the watch in here, there was no way to get around it.

Closing his eyes, Lee let his mind wander through his most private fantasy, the one he always tried to avoid: It began with him and Kara in the bunk room off the launch bay dressed only in their underwear and getting ready for bed, just the two of them. In the fantasy, Lee finally was able to tell Kara how much he wanted her, and she said, "Me too," and spread her arms to invite him into her bunk. But he didn't hurry right in, not with Kara. There was no need to. They had all the time in the universe.

So he decided that the first thing he'd do was to kiss every inch of her -- except the lips. He'd leave them for later. He imagined slipping her knit undershirt out of the way as needed but not taking it off as he progressed from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet, testing with his mouth and his tongue the varying textures of her skin, her hollows and her swells. Lee took pride in being thorough in every part of his life, and it took a while to cover her completely.

But it was worth it because then his dream Kara moaned and begged him to stop the teasing. "Kiss me on the lips," she said. "I need you to kiss me."

"Now?" he asked his beautiful Kara. "Okay, now, but only because you asked me." Then and only then he kissed her on the lips and let his tongue explore the inside of her mouth. He imagined it tasting just like her -- salty, sweet, vinegar and fire.

In his fantasy, Kara was the first to start pulling off clothes, but it didn't take him long to catch up and within seconds their bodies were lying together moistly warm and intimately personal. Then her arms were inviting him up higher and Kara was beneath him, and they moved to music and a song he wanted to sing with her forever. So soft, so soft, so very, very soft …

Lee quickly grabbed the jar.


	7. Chapter 6

Boxman Valerii Tyrol followed the Chief down the passageway.  It was funny.  Boxey always thought of himself by that name now.  It wasn't as though he'd forgotten his father, but even when the Colonel had been alive, he'd been gone for months, once even a whole year at a time, leaving Boxey with one or another of his aunts and uncles.  And his mother had died of pancreatic cancer years before the Judgment.  Boxey missed both of his parents, but he'd felt the same empty ache most of his life.

Missing Sharon was something else.  Every day it hurt with a freshness that didn't seem to go away.  The Chief had warned Boxey that seeing her tonight was going to be even worse.  But he had to do it.

He was fifteen years old, sixteen in ten months, and by Colonial law he'd be an adult on his next birthday and able to vote and enlist.  He was ready to make adult decisions and this one felt right.  He and Elosha had talked it over and agreed that Sharon wasn't a Cylon by choice.  She hadn't marched into Cylon headquarters and said, "Where do I sign up?"  She'd been as deceived as the rest of them.

The Chief stopped to rest a minute, leaning against a bulkhead.  He'd never really gotten his old strength back after that bullet in his arm.  Boxey said, "Is it much further, Galen?"  He had no idea where they were.  He thought he'd checked out every compartment and passageway on Galactica but he'd never seen this one before.  Presumably it led to the high security brig.

The Chief shook his head.  "Maybe another hundred meters then down some stairs."  Gesturing for Boxey to come close, he put an arm around the growing shoulders and said, "Box, old man, she looks like hell.  I just want you to know that it'll be okay if you want to leave.  She won't remember."

"I have to see her.  She saved me off Caprica then took me in.  I don't care if she's a Cylon, she's still Sharon, isn't she?"

The Chief's hand stroked the long hair Boxey kept tied back in a ponytail.  "Yeah, some of her still is."  He straightened up.  "Come on, let's go."

The security guard stationed outside Sharon's cell nodded at them.  "Evening, Chief," he said.  "She's been really quiet today, but you can try your luck."  There was a large rectangular machine next to the guard's desk with an array of colored lights that flashed in seemingly random, meaningless patterns.  It hummed.  A large helmet with an unusual crest lay on top.

The Chief nodded at the guard perfunctorily.  Boxey didn't like him either.

"Don't get too close.  She can't always control herself," the Chief reminded Boxey then he called out in a much louder voice, "Boomer, you in there?  Sharon?  Got someone to see you."  The cell was dark and full of shadows.

A stick figure arose slowly from the bed, ambled drunkenly across the floor and half fell against the bars.  "Hi ya, Gay," the thing that once had been Sharon Valerii said in a slurred voice.  The black glory of her hair was gone, shaved completely away.  The Chief hadn't told Boxey why.  Dark smudges circled her eyes and she'd lost at least twenty pounds.  She'd been stripped to her underwear and was barefoot.  She was dirty.  She was crying.

"Oh frak," Boxey gasped.  He'd been warned about how Sharon would look, but not enough, not nearly enough.

Her face lit up.  "Boxer!" she cried and held out her hands through the bars.  Sharon was the only one who called him Boxer.  It was Sharon, it was still really her.

Boxey took a step toward the cell, but the Chief pulled him back.  "No closer."

Shrugging off the restraining hand, Boxey said, "Yes, Sir," but it hurt to stay in place.  He silently watched as Sharon pulled her arms back inside.

"Miss you," she said.  Tears slowly tracked down her cheeks.  Her red-rimmed eyes were sunk into her head as though they were hiding from the light.

"I miss you too, Sharon."  Boxey glanced at the Chief then quickly away.  The Chief's eyes were also wet.  His own eyes stung.  Jesus, it was hard to be a grown-up.  "Galen and I, we're getting along, but it's not the same without you."

"He's going to take care of you.  You do what he says."

"Yes'm."  The Chief's hand had returned to Boxey's arm.  He resisted a desire to shrug it away again.  The Chief was hurting.  They all were.  He should get this over with.  Taking a deep breath, he tried to remember just exactly what he wanted to say.  "Sharon, I wanted to thank you for being my mom and taking care of me so good."  Sharon was staring at him and he felt like he had back on Judgment Day when everything had ended for everyone, only this time it was ending just for him. "You are special and you saved my life.  I just wanted you to know that I love you."

Sharon sobbed and started to turn away.  "Oh Lords, I can't take this."

Boxey looked at the Chief.  "Please, just let me touch her hands, that's all."

The Chief glanced at Sharon with a pained expression then he nodded slowly.  "Okay, but stay as far back as you can."  The guard stood up and his hand went to the grip of the electric prod he wore at his waist.

When Boxey took a few steps closer and stretched out his hands, Sharon's came eagerly out through the cell bars.  They touched fingertips.  "Honey," Sharon said.  "I love you too.  Just pass our love on.  Give it away to as many people as you can."

It felt so good just to touch Sharon again and hear her say that she loved him.  The Chief said it once in awhile but Sharon had always said it a lot.  Boxey missed it.

Sharon would feel better if she knew about their plan to adopt legacy babies.  "I will.  Me and Galen, we've got a plan.  We're going to …"

From behind him, the Chief said, "Don't tell her, Boxey.  She can't know."

Abruptly Sharon's head turned towards the Chief and her hands dropped away from Boxey's.  She was changing.  There was an opaque look to her eyes, as though the real Sharon was stepping out for a bit and leaving someone else in charge.  In an oily voice that dripped mockery she said, "How long you going to let Gay boss you 'round, Boxer?  He's just embarrassed I fooled him for so long."  Sticking an arm back through the bars, she gestured to him.  "Come closer and I'll tell you a secret."

The Chief had once again taken Boxey's arm.  He didn't try to pull free but he did lean as close to Sharon as he could.  "What is it?"

She spit on him, a slimy glob of white bubbles that dripped down the sleeve of Boxey's shirt, then as the Chief pulled him up the stairs, struggling and fighting to look back, she laughed like a striped kill-dog.  "Gotcha!" she shouted after them.

At the top, Boxey broke free and when he tried to speak he realized he was blubbering like a baby.  "If I go back, Sharon will be herself again.  I know she will.  It's gotta be easier for her when we're there.  Let me go back, please, Galen.  Please."  He'd forgotten all about being grown up.

"You can't go back, Boxey," the Chief said, and he was in a bad way too.  He'd stuck his chin out so far that he was in danger of falling over on it.  He always did that when he was upset.  "I can't let you go back down there.  We're going to …  She's not going to be in there anymore, Box."

Boxey stopped breathing.  They couldn't do this.  No.  Oh no.  "You're going to kill her?"  He shook his head violently.  Humans weren't supposed to do things like that -- kill people in cold blood.  That was supposed to be Cylons.

"She's volunteered to … " -- Boxey turned to run back down the steps to Sharon but the Chief grabbed his shoulders -- "Boxey, no!  She's volunteered to go on this mission to the Cylon home world.  She wants to help us win.  She wants to …"

The Chief said two more words as Boxey struggled away and broke free.  He tried not to remember them as he ran as fast as his legs could carry him down the passageway, then up stairwell after stairwell until half the Galactica was between him and Sharon.  But still the Chief's last two words rang in his ears.

" … die human."

.

Chief Tyrol bent over a workbench in the darkened, almost empty tool locker.  A pool of light illuminated the helmet-shaped tangle of tiny buses, connectors and multi-colored wires under his hands.  With a screwdriver the size of a toothpick he made an adjustment then moved the helmet under the lamp's magnifying glass to check his work.

Even when every ship in the refugee fleet had still been jammed from top to bottom with human beings, the Chief had found peace and privacy in here.  Now that two-thirds of the Galactica's crew had landed on Zodiac, it was quiet almost everywhere onboard, but this was still his personal refuge.  Once it had been his and Sharon's.

Tucking his blunt fingertips between two small buses, the Chief made another tiny adjustment.  The Redleken helmet was almost ready to test on Sharon again.  He'd managed to improve the charge capacity to a full hour.  The Commander and his committee had asked for a miracle and he'd done his best.

A couple of hours ago the Chief had come down here after giving up his search for Boxey.  The boy knew the ship better than he did now and had a thousand places to hide.  Tomorrow he'd try again, but more than likely Boxey would avoid him until the Galactica left for the Cylon home world.  They'd fly down to Zodiac together on the last shuttle out and that's all that mattered.  Then they'd have the rest of their lives to work things out.  The Chief hoped that it would be time enough.

Because of what the Chief and Sharon had used the tool locker for, he'd never oiled the hatch hinges.  They creaked a loud warning when the Commander pulled open the hatch and stepped through, his face briefly illuminated by the hangar's bright overheads.  When the hatch closed again, the locker's light was once more reduced to the puddle on the tool bench.

"Don't you ever sleep?" the Commander asked as the Chief stood up and tried to come to attention.  His left arm still didn't want to bend quite right.

"I could ask you the same, Sir," Tyrol said.  His wrist chrono. said oh-three hundred.  They didn't have enough crew left for a full three watches, so for these last few days only second watch had anything like full staff.  It didn't begin for five hours yet and only a few people should be up.  In the room's dim light the Chief couldn't see the Commander's face clearly, but he'd sounded tired.

"Well, you know what they say -- when you're going through hell, there's never time for a holiday.  Sometimes I just need to get away."  The Commander had moved closer to the lamp.  Stray upward rays of golden light emphasized the Commander's bronze skin tones and made his face resemble a roughcast metal sculpture.  He looked beyond tired.  He looked exhausted.

"Not too many places to get away to on the Galactica, Sir.  Have you been down to Zodiac?"

He shook his head.  "No time.  Lee went down for a few hours.  He said it was beautiful, a paradise.  It'll be a good place for you and Boxey to make a life."

The Chief and Boxey.  Not the Commander, nor his son, nor two hundred and twelve of his crewmates.  And not Sharon.  "Yes, Sir," the Chief said.

The Commander said, "Sit.  Don't let me keep you from your work," and looked around for a second chair.  Settling for a tall stool, he sat down and began to pick through the litter on the workbench as though he expected to find treasure instead of a week's accumulation of trash.

The Chief hadn't cleaned up since he'd begun the helmet project.  He had the unfinished helmet in his hands, but he hadn't found the little screwdriver.  It didn't matter.  He couldn't concentrate on that right now.  "Sir?  Can I ask an off-the-record question?"

The Commander sighed and put down the length of gold wire he'd found.  "Go ahead, Chief."

"Why didn't you choose me to go with you?  Was it because of Sharon?  I need to know, for my peace of mind."

Everyone not chosen must have asked the Commander the same question because he didn't have to think about the answer.  "It's nothing personal, Chief.  It's just that the colony needs you more than we do.  The Galactica's not going to be much more than a flying cannon.  If something goes wrong, we won't have time to fix it."

They sat silently for a moment, the Chief with the Redleken helmet still in his hands, the Commander gloomily staring at it.  "I guess I need permission to speak off the record too, Galen," he said.

"Sir?"

"Don't 'sir' me.  This isn't military."  The Commander seemed embarrassed, almost shy.  "I want to ask a very personal favor.  Call me … call me, 'Bill.'"

"Bill, Sir?  Okay … Bill."  The Commander was going ask him to build a memorial to the Galactica's crew, he was sure of it.  He'd been planning to do one anyway.  Something grand and beautiful so that future generations would know just how much had been sacrificed.

The Commander had folded his arms tightly across his chest.  He rocked back and forth just a little.  "I've heard through the grapevine that you and Boxey are going to foster some of the legacy babies."

Oh … Boxey's baby project.  Boxey had been studying the Holy Scrolls with Elosha and she'd suggested it as a way for him contribute to the Colony and the future.  But the Commander?  Somehow the Chief had assumed he would find someone special to raise his children.  But he had.  He'd found Boxey.  "We'd be honored, Sir."

The Commander's raised eyebrow and soft chuckle spoke even more than his words.  "I'm that obvious, am I?"

"Only to those who know you, Sir.  Did you get your match card yet?"

"Yeah, it's up in my quarters.  Can't decide what to do with it."  The Chief had to smile.  Even for the Commander it must be tough to ask women to let him father their children.  Especially for the Commander.  He wasn't a young man.

"If the mothers have no objection, just write my name across the top of their cards or next to your sticker.  Boxey will take care of the rest."

"I'm sure he will.  He's going to a very special man some day."  The Commander stood up again.  "Let me know if you need anything, Chief."

"There is one thing, Sir.  If you wouldn't mind."

The Commander's raised eyebrows asked for further details.

"If you should happen to see that grapevine again, tell him that I'm sorry and that I'd really wish he'd come home."

"He's sleeping in my quarters.  Why don't you come and get him in the morning?"

"I will, Sir.  Thank you."


	8. Chapter 7

Outside the mess hall entrance, the passageway bulkheads were covered with blue and yellow match cards.  About forty male volunteers had posted their blue legacy match cards on the left side of the hatch, and a similar count of women had posted their yellow ones on the right.  Each card had a code number, but no name.  Only the Paracelsus would know who was who.

With only four full days left and counting, two-thirds of the crew had already gone down to the planet.  The two hundred and twelve chosen volunteers and about four hundred others were still aboard, working around the clock to prepare the Galactica for her final battle.  But somehow amid all the work each day the men's stickers moved from the right side of the passageway to the left.  Only a few empty spaces remained on the yellow cards, and almost all the stickers were gone from the blue ones.  In a way, the cards were a sort of dating game minus the actual sex.

Standing among the mess hall furnishings stacked up in the passageway for offloading to a freighter and transport down to Zodiac, three enlisted women speculated about card owners.  A woman leaning against an up-ended bench voiced her theory that card numbers beginning with "212" were officers.

That was pure bunk.  There were only two of those.  Kara had already checked.  She stood apart from the knot of females, studying the display and fingering the card in her hand.  She was trying to decide whether or not this was for her.

Because of her daily practice sessions in the Cylon drone, she'd been one of the last volunteer women to have her eggs harvested.  They'd taken eight.  Commander Lighter had been amazed the drugs had produced so many.  "You are one fertile woman," she'd said.  They'd given her a yellow card with eight blank spaces, one for each of her eggs.

On her way into Lighter's sickbay lab, Kara had glanced through an open hatch and had seen Chief Tyrol's adopted son Boxey rocking a baby-sized bundle of blue blankets.  Tiny fingers had been wrapped around one of his fingers.  "Hey, who's the man?" Boxey had cooed as she'd watched in fascination.  "Who's the man, Stinger?"

It had been several weeks since Kara had last talked to him, not since before Boomer had gone frakkin' Cylon.  Teetering between childhood and maturity, all hormonal and serious at the same time, Boxey had grown into a responsible young man.  Lee had told Kara that Boxey was bearing up, but he hadn't said how.  Maybe he didn't know.

As Kara had left the lab, Boxey had accosted her. 

"Lieutenant Starbuck, Sir," Boxey had said, "I have a favor to ask.  The Chief and me, we're looking to foster a bunch of the legacy kids, and I was hoping, that is, we wanted to offer …  I mean, if you need someone …"

Boxey hadn't been able to find an end for his sentence so Kara had helped him out.  It had been the least she could do to repay what he'd offered -- parents for her children.  "I've seen you with the babies.  You're good.  Where do I sign up?"  He'd written a citizen number across the top of her card -- presumably Chief Tyrol's since Boxey was still a minor until his sixteenth birthday -- and the word "foster."  He'd looked back up at her, pointing at her first blank match space with his pen, "Can I?"

"Yours or the Chief's?" Kara had asked.

Boxey had blushed deeply, his fair skin almost glowing from the infusion of blood.  "Mine.  Doctor Lighter said I could 'cause I'm the only one left in my family."

"Then be my guest, Box."  He'd written in his name as Boxman Valerii Tyrol.  The kid was so sweet, and from what Kara had heard, she was supposed to kiss every guy who filled in a blank on her card.  She'd given Boxey a peck on the cheek.  It had brought back the blush.

So Kara had that taken care of -- parents for her legacy babies -- and good ones too.  And one father.  But there were still the seven blank spaces left to fill in with either a man's name, his citizen number or one of the blue donor stickers.  If she so chose.  She could also return the card as it was and the Paracelsus would take care of it for her.  She'd never considered herself shy, but the thought of asking up to seven more men to father her children was a bit daunting, and she sympathized with those who'd solved the problem by anonymously posting their cards here outside the mess hall.

"I'll bet that one's Lee Adama," a young woman said pointing at a blue card with only one sticker left.  It had originally had held ten, twice as many as the other cards.

Her older companion answered, "Nah, I heard that's one of the officers in CIC, Colonel Tigh, the Commander, somebody like that.  That's why the stickers are all gone.  Besides Serena wouldn't let Lee put his card up there.  It would be just too, too, if you know what I mean."

Kara frowned.  She hadn't meant to be eavesdropping, but the mention of Lee's name had caught her attention.  She should move away, but she didn't.

The group of women was silent for a moment, looking at the cards, possibly thinking about the legacy babies, but more likely thinking about the upcoming battle and those who would die.  The woman who hadn't spoken before said, "I heard they were divorced … down on the planet.  I heard Lee just got fed up and made Serena do the declaration thing."

Divorced?  Lee was divorced?  They'd not been on the best of terms the last few days, and Kara had been busy spending hours arm-wrestling with the stupid Cylon drone, the controls of which she firmly believed had deliberately been reversed from human standard.  Everything worked upside down.  She'd only seen Lee in snippets, a few minutes at a time, and he'd seemed tired and distracted … but divorced?

"When?" she asked without thinking.  "When was Lee divorced?"

All three women turned to stare at her.  She didn't care.  Long ago she'd learned how to stare almost anyone down.  The rumormonger finally said, "I don't know, Lieutenant Thrace.  It's just scuttlebutt."  Her expression asked, _Why don't you know already?  I thought he was your friend._

Kara wanted to find out the truth immediately if not sooner.  But Lee was off ship at the moment, out hunting with Keener for an asteroid of just the right shape and size to carry to the Cylon home world in the starboard landing bay.  He wasn't due back for at least three hours.

So Kara went to the next best source of information.  She went to Lee's father, figuring that one way or another he'd know the truth.  Nothing on the Galactica escaped the Commander for long.

First she checked in CIC.  The Commander wasn't there, although with all the torn up consoles and technicians everywhere it took Kara a few minutes to be sure.  And her usual source of information, Specialist Dualla, was already down on Zodiac.  She hadn't wanted to go, but she was three months pregnant and her husband Presidential Advisor Billy Keikeya had insisted she leave early.  No pregnant or nursing women had been allowed to volunteer.

Kara was about to leave when a dusty and disheveled Lieutenant Gaeta popped out from behind the tactical display and said, "Looking for somebody, Starbuck?"

Kara gratefully turned back.  "The Commander."

It was funny to see Gaeta dirty.  Somehow his wife Melinda had kept him regulation perfect, proper and pristine over the last three years even after everyone else had started looking ragged.  Today he seemed just a little bit desperate.  The rewiring must not be going well.  "He's in quarters putting papers together to ship down to Zodiac," Gaeta said quickly then disappeared again.

A few minutes later Kara knocked on the Commander's hatch, and the familiar gruff voice said, "Come in."  Commander Adama stood at his desk with a nicked and battered photo frame in each hand and a box at his elbow.  "Lieutenant Thrace, to what do I owe the honor?" he asked as she stepped inside.

Closing the hatch behind her, she leaned back against it.  "Kinda wanted to ask you something, Sir."  He didn't answer.

She stood uncertainly while the Commander put the pictures away in the box, put a lid on it and set it among several others on top of the low table.  Waving at the brown leather couch, he invited her to sit as he did so himself.  Seen up close, the Commander's scarred face had little of its usual energy and his features hung on his bones in tired folds.  His uniform looked about the same as everyone else's, frayed at the cuffs and loose around the buttonholes.  A carefully mended tear marked where he'd been knifed in an assassination attempt in their second year.  His ship boots were down at the heels and scuffed.  Even the Commander had run out of boot wax.

This wasn't going to be easy, Kara thought, especially with the Commander looking so sad and worn.  Realizing that she still held the yellow match card in her hand, she put it on the couch between them.  The Commander's eyes followed the card down then quickly came back up.  He had an unreadable expression, one she'd never seen before.

"It's about Lee, Sir," Kara said, but after hearing herself speak, she suddenly didn't want to go further.  It had been stupid of her to come here.  If Lee's father didn't know about the divorce, it wasn't her place to tell him.  She was tempted to excuse herself and leave, but she'd already said Lee's name.  It was probably too late now.

"You've heard the scuttlebutt," the Commander said, "and you want to know the truth, if he's really divorced."

"Yes, Sir."  Kara wondered if she looked as surprised as she felt.  As a senior officer, the Commander had to be a good judge of character and tactical situations, but sometimes he seemed almost psychic.

Sighing deeply he leaned back.  "It's true, two days ago down on Zodiac."

He looked so sad that Kara automatically said, "I'm sorry."

"Are you really?" he asked, his eyes searching her face for something, she wasn't sure what.  Maybe the truth.  "I don't think I am.  Rashen always had poor taste in women, but I was hoping Serena could make Lee happy.  I was wrong."

"You were trying to honor Colonel Woolcott's memory, Sir."  And Lee was trying to make you happy, she silently added.

The Commander's sad smile animated his face a little.  "Memories shouldn't make us miserable."  His hand moved towards where her yellow card lay on the couch.  He asked, "May I?"

"Certainly."  After all, there wasn't much for the Commander to see, just Boxey's name and seven blank spaces.

Looking at the card, the Commander chuckled and shook his head.  "Boxey got to you first, eh?  He's an enterprising boy, isn't he?"

Kara nodded her head then shook it.  She was confused.  Boxey had got to her first?  Still holding Kara's card the Commander stood up and went back to his desk.  He pulled a blue card out of a pile of papers, removed a long adhesive strip and put it in Kara's second blank space.  Stroking his hand across the paper in a caress, he smiled to himself then his dark brown eyes came back up to hers.  "Thank you," he said.

Too surprised to speak, Kara watched blankly as the Commander returned to stand over her.  He held out the yellow card, now crossed by a bright blue stripe.

"I believe you owe me a kiss," the Commander said.

Kara looked up at him.  All she could see were his steady eyes.  Forgetting to take the card, she stammered, "I guess that's the deal."  But this was the Commander.  It would be like kissing a holy Lord.  Standing up, Kara closed her eyes, puckered her lips and waited uncertainly.

At the sound of the Commander's throaty laugh, Kara dared to look.  He had a smile from ear to ear as he said, "You look just like a little girl waiting for her grandpa to kiss her."  Taking her hand, he brought it up to his lips and kissed the back of her fingers.

"Good luck with Lee," he said as he tucked the yellow card into her captive hand.  "You're going to need it.  He's a mess.  Just make him happy, okay?"

There was no use pretending that she didn't understand what he meant.  Kara nodded.  "Thank you, Sir.  I'll try."

Out in the passageway she stood for a moment, fighting for emotional equilibrium.  Lee had been divorced for two days and had been avoiding her ever since.  There must be some reason he hadn't told his best friend about the drastic change in his life.  Did Lee think she'd rag him about it?  Or did he know that she loved him and was avoiding her because he didn't love her back?  She wouldn't be surprised if Lee knew.  Subtlety wasn't one of her finer skills.

Turning on her heel, Kara trotted off to the rec. room.  She'd persuaded the moving crew to leave behind a punching bag.  It was time to put it to use.  Better to hit it than Lee.


	9. Chapter 8

Kara let her body lean forward against the restraining straps while the fire blackened walls of the largest of Galactica's hangar lifts slid past.  That landing had been downright humiliating.  "Don't let it get to you," she muttered to herself.  "It's just a frakkin' machine."  Yeah, just a machine.  It wasn't Lee Adama.  If it had been, she would have been happy to kill it.  Savagely Kara yanked the drone's fat, soft control stick into its locked position.  There was something revoltingly phallic about the drone's controls.  She'd had to fight herself to work with them.

But she'd been given this assignment and by the Lords she'd get it right.  She just had to forget the heartless bastard CAG that had given it to her.

Lee was also out flying today, still hunting for an asteroid, and Kara had wanted to be far from the Galactica in case he returned.  Since Boomer had described the Cylon home world as a standard G-class planet with oceans, atmosphere, weather and the rest, she'd decided to zip around night-side Zodiac and get a feel for the drone's atmosphere handling capabilities.

She'd soon learned that it didn't have any.  Even with its A.I. disconnected, the "frakkin' machine" seemed to have a mind of its own, resisting every dive and turn.  Vipers were bad enough in atmosphere.  Designed primarily for space combat, with their stubby airfoils and blunt nose they vibrated like hell at plus mach 2 in anything thicker than upper ionosphere.  But with the reverse single wing, the Cylon was far worse.  Kara had already warned Kelly to outfit his team with mouth guards.

The Cylon was also a son of a bitch to land.  Today Kara had put several new scimitar-shaped dents in the wilds of Zodiac.  But at least she hadn't put one in the Galactica.  Not this time, not quite.  It hadn't been for lack of trying.  Where had her mind been anyway?  Definitely not on flying.  Probably on Lee.

Yesterday after the little misunderstanding with Commander Adama, Kara had chickened out on asking Lee for one of his match strips.  A girl could handle only so much sex in one day.  She had the frakkin' card tucked into the flight suit pocket with Lee's ring.

Although Kara wasn't exactly wishing Lee dead, she was sure wishing him anywhere except where she might run into him.  If he didn't want to tell her he was divorced, she didn't want to hear it.  And she certainly didn't want to see him and know finally and for sure that he'd never be hers.

Sitting back up, Kara popped the lever that released the hatch.  With a grinding screech, a hole opened in the deck.  The gears were making far too much noise.  Her practice landings must have messed with the drone's ventral surface.  Removing her helmet she set it on the control console and, like she always did post-flight, gave her scalp a quick and thorough finger massage to work away the itch.  A moment later she heard the rattle of a boarding ladder being pushed into place, then a head popped up out of the deck like a jack in the box.  But it wasn't one of Chief Cally's kids.  It was Lee.

Oh that was just great.  Just frakkin' great.  Could this day get any worse?  She really, really didn't want to see him right now.

From the top of the too-short boarding ladder he hauled his butt up on to the drone's deck, scooted the rest of the way aboard, swung around and leaned back through to take a clipboard from someone below.  He flipped whomever it was a casual salute, stood up and looked at Kara, with a big, lip-chewing smile on his face and a dance in his eyes.

Lee was severely amused.  Maybe he was going to deliver one of his famous "are you really a pilot or did I just dream flight school?" monologues, complete with sound effects and hand gestures.

Kara had not nearly pancaked the drone for Lee's or anyone else's entertainment.  So far she'd had exactly three days practice in this bastard and she had exactly three left to get it under control and she did not need snide comments from the cheap seats!  By all the holy Lords, she'd beat it!  Or she'd beat Lee, one or the other.  In the mood she was in, it wouldn't make a lot of difference.

"That's got to be the messiest landing I've seen since Judgment Day," Lee said as he began the post-flight check.

"You try flying this tub!" Kara growled.  "I've seen tissue boxes with better aerodynamics."  With her thumbs she released the harness buckles, shrugged the straps off and stood up.  "And I thought you were off asteroid mining or something."  Yanking the check off board from Lee's hands, she began to fill in her post-flight information.

She was doing her best to ignore him, but apparently he wasn't going to buy it.  The jerk was as cool as a cucumber.  Kara wondered if he'd been taking shit face lessons from Colonel Tigh.

"Caught one.  Tucked her away all safe and sound."  Under heavy fire, Lee's amusement had dimmed somewhat.  His head cocked to one side.  "Do you need help, Kara?  Is there anything I can do?"

Lee had chosen just the right ammunition for return fire, and it hurt like a piece of shrapnel.  The only effective counter for gentle empathy was a heavy barrage of sarcasm.  "I really think you've done enough already … sir."  There, that should put him in his place, preferably a far-off place full of unexploded contact mines.

It did.  The last vestige of a smile faded off Lee's face and when she slammed the check off board back in his hands, he said, "I'm going to send over Socinus to look at that hatch.  Stick around and wait for him, then at your convenience, I'd like a full report, Lieutenant Thrace.  I'll be in quarters."

Lee looked like she'd kicked him.

As he eased back through the deck hatch, Kara flopped into the pilot's seat and fought down an angry sob.  Frak, frak, frak.  She was never, ever going to get it right with Lee.

.

In the three years since Judgment Day, a fourth of the ship's living space had been either irreparably damaged or closed off to save energy.  It had made every place else … tight.  Despite Lee's position as Galactica's CAG, before he'd married Serena he'd shared quarters with five men, living in a cramped, comradely togetherness that went far beyond the military's normally chummy living conditions.  After the marriage, he and Serena had been assigned a compartment barely three meters square and that included the head.

This past week crews had been closing off more, mostly the compartments and passageways lining the hull, blowing them full of repair foam to make the Galactica as space-tight as possible.  All over the ship white plastek caulking outlined hatches.  The Galactica was getting ready to die.

Lee, Keener and Robinson, an engineer off the Hephaestus, had spent the entire day in Boomer's Raptor hunting for an asteroid.  They'd finally found one, a little shorter than optimal, but composed almost entirely of a single piece of iron ore.

CIC had designated the asteroid Shiva from an ancient Kobol legend.  The demon Shiva, it was said, had eaten cities for breakfast and planets for lunch.  Only the Lords knew what he'd had for dinner.

All three men had spent two hours EVA while bolting on the inertia regulators.  After Robinson powered them up, the Raptor had maneuvered the asteroid out of solar orbit and back to the Galactica.  The delicate insertion into the empty landing pod had eaten up another hour.  But finally they had their planet-killer ready, its deadly inertia damped by the regulators but ready for release over the Cylon home world where the asteroid would become a ballistic missile with an impact in the million megaton range.  Or so they hoped.  It was a desperate tactic.  They didn't even know how it would respond to an FTL jump while being carried in a landing pod.

Robinson had been pleased, Keener proud, and Lee exhausted, almost asleep on his feet, but he'd still gone over to the port side landing pod to check on Kara and the Cylon drone.  Chief Cally had told him Kara's piloting practice was less than smooth, and he could believe it after witnessing her controlled crash landing.  Then he'd humiliated Kara by letting her know he'd seen the whole thing.

It would have been better if he'd just left, but he'd convinced himself he could help.  She'd shot him down in his tracks.  Justifiable homicide he'd figured.  So he'd asked for a report and left.  Although Kara was a hard ass and a rowdy, she had yet to disobey a direct order.  She'd be by sometime soon and he'd have a chance to apologize and make things right between them.  The Galactica had less than a handful more days.  There was no time left to hold on to pain.

In the meantime Lee was spending another night alone in quarters.  The tiny space had always been Serena's more than Lee's, and although he didn't exactly miss his ex-wife, without her the compartment seemed preternaturally empty, like a birdcage without the bird.

He could smell the cologne Serena had sprayed in her locker.  It had decayed into something suggesting dead flowers and funerals.  Although the small room had been emptied of everything except a single chair, a desk console, and a double-size mattress, it still felt close and suffocating as if the ventilation system had been blocked.  Starkly white overhead light reflected off bare bulkheads and revealed the empty display frames where Serena had hung her press clippings.  Only Lee's cluttered desktop maintained a semblance of normality.

He had been stoically ignoring his blue legacy card and a short stack of yellow ones while he sorted through the mess he'd just dumped out of his desk drawer.  Looking for anything worth saving, he'd found so far a vacuum wrapped cigar from his wedding that he'd set aside as a peace offering for Kara, Serena's wedding ring and a palm-sized copy of the first Holy Scroll, the standard brown leather-bound military issue handed out to every man at enlistment and tucked into every locker.  Most servicemen had at least two copies, if not three or four.  On Judgment Day Lee had lost everything but his life, his father and a few friends, so he had only the one and his father had given him that.

He was trying to find the verse his father had quoted when they'd talked about his precipitate divorce down on Zodiac.  To Lee's surprise, his father had told him to forget about Serena and live every day from beginning to end.  "No man's life is ever whole," his father had said with the air of a minister, "so try not to miss any of the pieces."  Maybe Lee should have expected that.  Now he and his father had something in common -- a failed marriage.

Lee was sure the verse was in here somewhere.  He'd found, "Death is a milder fate than tyranny," and "Death is the cure for all illnesses," but not the verse his father had used.

Focused on the Scroll's tiny print, Lee didn't look up when a knock sounded at his hatch and it simultaneously creaked open a crack.  He hadn't bothered to say, "Come in," because the whole squadron knew his door was always open.  It had driven Serena crazy.

"Boss man?"  The hatch squealed as it opened further.  Oh thank the Lords, it was Kara at last, and her hesitant two words had sounded a bit calmer.

Lee quickly threw the scroll on the desk, where it hit the stack of yellow cards and scattered them a little, then he leaned back in his chair and tucked his hands behind his head.  Kara would never let him hear the end of it if she caught him reading a Holy Scroll.

Her pert nose poked through the opening, followed quickly by the rest of her.  Big round eyes filled half her face.  Big eyes usually meant Kara was anxious.  Maybe she was feeling bad too.  "Come on in, Starbuck," Lee said as he waved at the bed.  "'Fraid that's the only chair we have unless you want this one."

He resisted the temptation to cover up the blue and yellow cards on the desk.  Kara wasn't here about that, and she probably had her legacy match card already completed and returned.  He'd wanted to ask her, but it was almost certainly too late now.  It was too late for a lot of things.

"This is fine," Kara said as she sat down on edge of the tightly made-up mattress.  The small compartment put her so close to Lee that they were practically knocking knees.  "I won't keep you long.  My report can be made in about three words -- We're doing fine.  Crappy flying characteristics, but fine.  I'm getting the hang of it.  Socinus thinks there's an aileron still a little out of alignment.  He's working on it now."

"Good," Lee said and nodded.  There wasn't much more he could say without putting his foot in it.  He was struck by how vulnerable Kara looked.  Without her temper burning, she seemed tired, edgy and afraid.  That wasn't anything new.  All the Viper pilots were afraid all of the time.  The smart ones were terrified.  Those that weren't had died long ago.  There was a saying as old as time, "There are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots."

Like Lee, Kara wore the threadbare dark green pull-on sweatpants and loose knit pullover sweater that had long been the de-facto off-duty uniform of the day, given the Galactica's chilly temperature.  However, unlike Lee she wore make-up -- a little extra pink to her cheeks and lips and a black outline around her eyes.  That's why they'd looked so big.  After watching Serena put on make-up every day, Lee noticed things like that.

But he'd never seen Kara wear make-up, even when she had been engaged to Zak.  Just as surprising, her hair looked combed.  At least most of the freshly washed damp and curly tendrils were temporarily lying down instead of sticking out.  She was trying to look pretty for him.  She did feel badly about their near fight.

Lee started to say, "I wanted to …" at the same time Kara said, "I guess you …"

They chuckled together although it sounded strained.  "You go first," Lee said.  "Mine's nothing that won't wait."  He hated seeing her this way, downcast and nervous.  If she had something to tell him, he wanted to hear it, even if it meant getting chewed out.  He'd rather have her yelling than like this.  Reaching out across the tiny space separating them, he massaged her folded hands and dared once again to offer help.  "What's the matter?  Talk to me."

Taken a little by surprise, Kara's mouth opened and closed and her eyes shifted away and back.  Lee had the distinct impression she had reconsidered what she'd planned to say.  Maybe she was just going to roast him, rather than an all-out flaming.  Some words finally came out of Kara's mouth with a stutter and a flicker of a smile, "How … how are you doing?"  Her voice had the tone of someone inquiring about a bereavement.  "Do you miss her?"

The conversation had turned on a cubit and handed back change.  Lee was floored.  He'd been expecting a thorough dressing down and a request to keep his nose to himself, but apparently Kara had heard about Serena and the divorce.  He'd meant to tell her, but in the handful of moments they'd spent together this week, none had seemed the right one.  She'd heard about it secondhand.  He was touched that she'd asked.  "I'm okay, I guess."  He looked around the empty quarters.  Lee never lied to Kara, not if he knew the truth and was free to tell it.  "A little lonely, but there's a lot to be said for peace and quiet."

"The quiet, at least.  Never enough of that."  Kara's eyes slid past Lee to his desk and probably that stack of frakking cards, then back to him.  Why was he so self-conscious about them?  Every volunteer had one.  "Your dad said you went down to Salvation City on Zodiac.  What's it like?  I haven't really been able to do much sightseeing."

Lee couldn't help but smile in gratitude that Kara hadn't asked for the dirty details of the divorce.  She'd always had a lot more class than Serena.  Tilting back his head, he closed his eyes and tried to remember all the sights, sounds and smells of the planet.  Taking a long, wistful breath, he said, "Well, the city was a load of crap, but the planet is wonderful.  Flowers everywhere, sweet air, sunshine.  It was … it was 'A veritable garden of the gods …"

"… as seen by few mortals.'"  Kara nodded as she finished the familiar Scroll quotation for him.  "As beautiful as Kobol then?  It'll be a good home for our babies?"

Lee had been surprised when Kara had first asked about Commander Lighter's project.  She and Zak had had the most horrendous arguments about having a family, but that had been a long time ago, in another lifetime.  And here she was, bringing it up again.  Maybe he'd been misreading her.  Kara had always been Lee's pillar of strength, something to test himself against to see if he measured up.  He'd been expecting her to be super-humanly tough like always.  But she was a woman too, and despite her frequently voiced misgivings, she'd make a damned fine mother.

"Yeah, I guess so.  I hope so."  If only he could figure out what to do with his card.  "Have you made all your donor matches yet?"

"A few.  What about you?"  Kara had made only a few?  Maybe it wasn't too late to ask her after all.  Rather than answer in words, Lee shuffled through the litter on his desk, pulled out his hateful blue card and handed it to Kara.

Kara took it by the edges, as though she thought it might singe her fingertips, but then she broke into a smile that looked almost relieved.  "Wow!  Ten!  And I thought I was hot stuff with eight."

"Lighter said something about a rare genetic type, but I think Dad put her up to it."  Taking the card back, he stared at it in brooding silence.  One sticker had already been removed and he had no idea where it had gone.  During yesterday's watch he'd left the card on his desk.  When he'd returned, it had been minus one sticker.  Today he'd hidden the card under his mattress.  He must be old fashioned as hell.  He wanted to know the mothers of his children.

Picking up the yellow cards from his desk, he said, "All these were dumped on my desk today while I was out.  I feel like I'm being gang-raped.  I don't know who these women are!"  He dared to look at Kara to see if she was amused.  She was.  Good, he still could make her laugh.

Kara chuckled.  "You've got a lot of secret admirers, Lee.  They're attracted by the pretty face.  Let me see."  She took the yellow cards out of his hand and started shuffling though them.  Holding up one, she said, "Well, this is probably Amy Krebold up in CIC.  See these two written-in names?  They're friends of hers on Colonial One.  I suspect they'll be fostering her children.  They're good people … for bureaucrats, anyway."

Taking the card, Lee considered for a moment.  Krebold was a solidly muscular Valkyrie of a woman, about ten centimeters taller than Lee, but smart, funny, honest and a hard worker.  Kara obviously approved of her.  She'd had only four blank spaces to begin with.  He put a sticker on her card.  Now she had only one.

Kara held out another.  "I don't know who this is, but that's Tyrol's ID at the top and that means it's one of Boxey's fosters.  He can tell you for sure, but I'm willing to bet it's somebody special."

Out of five spaces the card had only one left open.  Lee filled it in.  This wasn't so hard.  Judging by Kara's giggles and smiles, she was getting a kick out of this.

Kara had another card.  "I don't know who this one belongs to either, but … " she pointed at one of the stickers already on the card "… that's your father."  As Kara held out the card, short creases bracketed her eyes and lips.  She was anxious again.  For some reason she wanted him to choose this one too.

Lee was happy to make her happy.  "They're going to be making up new names for family relationships," he said as he took the card and filled in the next blank space under his father's.  "The poor kid's going to be an uncle to his brother."

Kara chuckled.  She looked pleased.  "Or an aunt to her sister."  She held out another card.

"So what's your best guess for this gal?" Lee asked.  The yellow card was another one with Chief Tyrol's ID across the top.  Of its original eight spaces, six were still left.  It was nice to find another procrastinator, a sort of kindred spirit.

"I don't have to guess.  It's mine."

Lee just stared at Kara's card.  "Yours?" he asked.  Picking up the previous card, he glanced at it then back at hers.  Yes, that was his father's number.  He'd been wondering how Kara had known his father's code.  "Dad asked you too?"  He looked up at her.  "How did he …?  Why did you let him …?"

Lee didn't understand everything he was feeling, but most of it was confused.  And not happy.  He'd competed with his father's image and reputation during his entire military career, but he'd never thought he'd be competing with him for women.

"I don't want to fight with you about it, Lee.  Now's not the time for fighting about anything, okay?"  Despite her words, some of the combative snarl had returned to Kara's voice.  She wasn't going to back down on this one.  Figures.  Lee had yet to win a contest with his father.  "Your dad asked if he could, and I was honored.  Just like … like I'd be honored if you would ..."  Her voice trailed off.  But Lee didn't say anything and continued to stare at her card.  Damn him!  Everywhere he went his father had been there first.  It was like an endless curse.

Kara reached out to grab back her card.  "You know, this is a really bad idea.  Maybe I'd better …"

Playing keep away, Lee half turned in his chair to stay out of reach.  "No, please, I'm sorry, Kara.  It's just … I used to have these wonderful dreams about being the greatest dad ever, playing ball with my kid, teaching him how to fly, just giving him every little thing he could want."  Lee had been so sure he could out do his father in that at least.  "And now, I'm not even going to see my kids.  I won't even know their names.  I don't know how to feel.  It's all weirder than hell."

Kara had a guilty look on her face and her shoulders bowed forward.  Her hands rested on the bed as though she was ready to catapult herself up and out of there.  But she didn't make another effort to retrieve her card.

Over the past five years Kara had spent a lot of time helping Lee mend fences with his father -- patching arguments and offering a listening ear to his moaning while turning a mostly blind eye to his marriage problems.  She cared so much.  And for no good reason at all.  It had all come his way and he'd given her so little.

Lee took a deep breath and released it to a count of ten while he reminded himself that he'd long ago forgiven his father for having a successful career.  Having Kara suddenly thrust between them had brought it all back.

He looked at her and silently begged for understanding and acceptance.  "Do you know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, I kinda do," she said.  "You'd be a great father."

"_Might_ be a great father.  If the Lords fly with us," Lee reminded her.  Reaching out, he stroked her arm then slid his hand down to take hers.  "You would be a great mom."

"Oh yeah, right," she said.  "At least my kids would always know where to find me -- either in a Viper or the brig."  Lee gave her the snorting laugh that she seemed to want, but that's not how he felt at all.  He was seeing Kara's wicked grin and shiny green eyes on another, smaller face.  She would make beautiful babies.  He'd once thought that of Serena until he'd discovered the ugly heart that lay beneath the pretty face.  But Kara had both the face and the heart -- as well as courage that never faltered and loving kindness that never stopped.  Lee wanted some of her babies to be his.

Too bad it had to be done in a laboratory instead of a bed.

"Come here," Lee said and patted his lap.  "Come, sit here.  I want to tell you something."  They'd always been comfortable with each other, but this was a pretty intimate invitation.  He wasn't sure she'd come.  Kara didn't hesitate.  With a smile and a pleased chuckle, she left the bed and moved to sit in Lee's lap.  Shifting his legs a little to carry the extra load, he put a hand behind her butt to steady her.  For whatever reason, she ignored it, and he reveled in the feel of the firm round muscles.  This was a fantasy come true and his body was beginning to take notice.  Was he coming on to Kara?  He didn't care, not anymore.  This felt so good, like something that was meant to be.  He hugged her.

"Look, I'm sorry about Serena," Lee began.

A broad grin answered that.  "She's a pretty sorry character, alright."

"I'm serious, you brat."

"So am I."

Kara wasn't going to be helping him on this.  Lee went on.  "I thought she needed me."  He shook his head at his own stupidity.  "She needed me way too much.  And I let her come between us.  I was trying to make a family and I nearly broke mine apart."  Kara's head was above Lee's.  He tilted back a little so he could see her face.  "You're family, you know."  He meant it.  If they'd had time he would have asked Kara to marry him.

His words provoked a totally unexpected reaction.  Kara asked in a voice as lush as velvet, "Are you sure that's what I am?  Just family?"  Putting her hand behind his head, she let her fingers play in the short hair at the nape of his neck.  Her head bent forward until she looked directly into his eyes.

Maybe inviting Kara into his lap hadn't been such a good idea.  She was so close that he could smell her sweet breath and see the shine of her lipstick.  And he had things going on down south that he didn't want to think about.  All he could see were two pink lips.  "Family," he affirmed softly.

When those lips brushed Lee's, he groaned and pulled away with a jerk.  What was he thinking about?  He'd been divorced only three days and he wanted to get married again?  Kara deserved far better than a lovesick fool on the rebound from a bad marriage.

Kara straightened, and her hand came to her mouth.  "Family," he heard her mutter.  She shook her head in negation.  "No, no, you're not, Lee Adama.  I'm not going to let you."  Turning back, she said, "Look, I've got an idea."  She reached past him and picked up his blue card, peeled off a long strip, and used it to fill in a blank space on hers.  Pointing at the new match, she asked, "What's this little guy's name?"

Lee breathed a silent sigh of relief that Kara had taken the initiative.  Maybe they wouldn't marry but they would have children together.  "William Zachias," he said with absolute conviction.  Taking the blue card, he pulled off another sticker.  "And this one is Karanita."  He held out his hand, praying that Kara would give him her match card.

She did.  "Karanita.  I like it.  How did you come up with that?"

"It's what I was going to name Serena's first baby, Karan or Karanita.  You know, after my best friend."  For a long moment the conversation foundered on the shoals of Serena.  Had he just called Kara his best friend?  Is that what he wanted her to be?  Just a friend?

Lee wasn't going to let Serena ruin this.  He'd divorced her so that his life could go on.  "But how about the twins?" he suddenly asked.  Picking up his card once more, he transferred two stickers to hers.  He looked to see what she'd think of that.  She liked it.  A broad Kara smile played across her face.  When Lee's hand went up to explore it, she kissed his fingertips and rubbed her face into his palm like a spidercat begging for a pet.

Was it really too late for them?  When they had only three guaranteed days left to their lives, and a whole world of crazed robots to defeat, was it wrong to find pleasure in what was left?

Kara looked back at the card.  "Ouch!" Kara said.  "Twins?  Gee, I don't know.  I've always kinda favored the name Merry.  How about Merry and Berry?"

Lee nodded.  "That'd work for either sex."  He grinned.  "See, I told you that you'd be a great mom."  He pulled her head down so he could kiss her cheek, but whether by accident or design she turned it and their lips lightly touched.  Once more with faces just inches apart they were locked them into a frozen tableau.  Lee's heart was beating so hard and fast that he thought Kara must be able to hear it, and his body had gone far beyond ready and willing, and had reached achingly able.

This time it was Kara who pulled away.  Her expression had shifted.  "Lee, aren't you going to ask anyone else?"

Did he want to?  Could there be anyone better for him than Kara?  "No," he said.  "If you want to find someone else, I'll understand, but you're all I want."  Tipping his head back, he looked up into the green eyes that were studying his face.  Would she say "yes" if he proposed?  It was ridiculous question to consider and he couldn't bring himself to ask.  Instead he went back to the babies.  "What would you say to another set of twins?" he asked and patted her stomach.  "About recovered there?"

That brought out the giggle he'd hoped for.  Kara put his last two stickers on her card.  "Look at that," she said.  "Six kids and we've never even had sex."

Whoa!  That was a pretty audacious thing to say, even for Kara.  After the words came out of her mouth, she looked at him quickly and away.  Was that just a faint hint of more pink under her makeup?  It was charmingly vulnerable and beguilingly beautiful.  It was irresistible.  Lee tried very hard not to smile as he said, "No, we haven't.  But there's always a first time for everything."

Kara moved suddenly to stand up.  "Lee, I don't think this is …"

Oh frak, that hadn't gone over very well.  It must have sounded too much like a proposition.  He held onto her.  "Kara, Kara, sweetheart, please no.  I didn't mean it that way.  If this were any other time or any other place, I'd ask you to marry me."  She settled back down but her arm didn't go back around him.  He continued.  "If you want to, I still will."

"No," she snorted and shook her head.  "Just think of the reception.  Who would we invite?  Cylon central control?"  Her soft eyes belied her smartass words.  "But you'd marry me, Lee?  Really?"

"Really."

Some of the imp returned to Kara's smile.  She looked at him sideways.  "I don't know.  This is so sudden!  I'll have to think about it."

She was teasing but she was also asking for a little bit more reassurance.  What could he give her for a token?  Lee turned to the desk and combed around for the wedding ring.  "This was Serena's, but if you don't mind …"

Kara shuddered delicately then an embarrassed smile stole across her face.  She dug into a pocket saying, "I have a better idea."  When her hand came out it held a heavy man's ring.  "Here," she said and dropped it in his palm.

It was his Academy ring.  Lee looked it over in amazement.  Kara had had his ring?  For how long?  It must be a couple of years since he'd lost it.  "I found it after our fight," Kara told him.  "I've been carrying it for luck and so far it's worked.  Everywhere I go you've been protecting me."  She looked so pleased with herself.  Taking the ring back, she slipped it on her thumb and said, "I'll wear this, if it's okay with you."  She held out her hand to admire the ring and smiled at Lee as if inviting him to join her in a laugh.

Lee wasn't feeling like laughing.  He had something in mind that felt a lot better.  "Oh Kara," he groaned.  He put his hand behind her head, pulled it firmly to his, and finally … _finally_ their lips met.


	10. Chapter 9

On the corner of his desk Colonel Paul Tigh lined up his evening regimen of three pills -- a muscle relaxer for back spasms, a sleep aid and the same vitamin supplement the nutritionists fed all the active-duty military personnel.  Two of the three pills were new to him and he was so tired from supervising the re-wiring of the CIC he'd forgotten which was which.

A few weeks ago after the Colonel complained of fatigue and insomnia the doctor started him on a sleep aid.  Then just yesterday his frakking back had suddenly locked up on him.  After a hurried consultation with the doctor in the almost completely disassembled sickbay, the muscle relaxer had been changed too.

It was all too much for the Colonel to keep track of, but since he wasn't fond of pain, he took his pill doses religiously, and if he sometimes thought that a slug of ambrosia would do the same trick and taste a hell of a lot better, he kept that between himself and his private demons.

Except for a half dozen technicians, they'd offloaded all of the Galactica's medical staff today.  Zodiac needed them far more than the Galactica's skeleton crew.  Besides there wasn't much left onboard to doctor with.

Pouring water out of his carafe into a steel coffee cup, Tigh gulped the pills down one at a time, each with a separate swallow of water.  He couldn't even chug-a-lug anymore.  It was hell getting old.  Now there was something to be grateful for -- most likely he wouldn't be getting any older.

The doctor had said the new muscle relaxer would take about a half hour to kick in and Tigh already knew to a nicety the sleeping pill's effects.  Like everyone else he had plenty of packing to do whenever he had a spare minute and now was as good a time as any.  Unbuttoning his jacket, he hung it on a hanger in his locker.  His shoes followed.  If he couldn't get drunk, he could at least get a little more comfortable.

Sitting down at the desk he began emptying out the drawers and tossing the crumbs of his life into the last of the six boxes he'd been allocated for shipping down to Zodiac.  He'd already packed his private journal with instructions for it to be passed on to his (Lords help us!) children when they came of age, as well as the astrometric FTL navigation manuals from above his bunk and a miscellany of clothes, flags and memorabilia.  Who would have thought a traveling man could collect so much?  He'd already packed most of it up once, three years ago right before Judgment Day, when he'd still been expecting to rot away in a quiet planet-bound retirement, probably as a divorced and lonely bastard with nothing to do but stare at his navel and get drunk.

This time he was packing it up for good.  For better or worse, he would be leaving it behind on Zodiac.

Tigh took the screwdriver out of the top left drawer, arose and went to the Third Wing Vigilante emblem on the bulkhead, his only remaining link to his assignment in the first Cylon war.  He and Bill had served together then -- Saul and Husker, the two best pilots in the fleet.

When a knock sounded at the hatch, Tigh had about half or the placard's screws removed.  He didn't stop what he was doing.  Since his ship phone had been out for months and been declared irreparable, whenever he was needed in CIC they sent down a runner.  "Come," he shouted.  The hatch swung open.

"This better be good," he continued as he put down the screwdriver.  "I was about to go to bed."  He froze in astonishment when he saw who stood in the round opening.  Oh frak, and here he was half undressed.

.

Doctor Carmen Massinger, sometime geophysicist and long time mother of an idealistic teenager, smiled uncertainly at Galactica's executive officer.  "Well, I'll do my best, Colonel, but I make no promises."

Although she'd expected to surprise Colonel Tigh with this unannounced visit, he looked like a Highland pronghorn caught in a rover's headlights, frozen with fear and waiting to be shot.  He was out of uniform and a bit disheveled.  His eyes were the size of quarter cubits, and his fair, nearly transparent skin had turned slightly pink.

If she'd put him on the spot, Carmen felt badly.  The Colonel had made sure her son Gil would not be chosen for this final mission, and she owed him a lot.  Maybe her best bet would be to drop this off and get gone.  Holding out a tall bottle loosely wrapped in a white bag, Carmen said, "I just wanted to give you a little gift."  The Colonel unfroze enough to drop his eyes and look.  "I was told you take a nip now and then."

An immediate smile confirmed the veracity of her information.  "I've been known to, yes," the Colonel said.  After quickly glancing back over his shoulder into his quarters, he half shrugged as if saying to himself '_what the frak?'_ and stepped aside.  "Won't you come in?" he invited her with a shallow bow.  "I'm afraid it's a bit torn up, but if you don't mind a little chaos, I'd love to share a drink with you."

Carmen smiled in relief.  "Chaos is my middle name, Colonel Tigh.  It's a key supposition in planetary theory, you know."

Shoving aside boxes with his stockinged feet, the Colonel nodded.  "Let me just clear you a path here.  Why don't you take the chair?"  When he bent over to move one last box and to pull the chair out, the overhead light glistened on his smoothly bald pate.  He straightened and one of his hands went to support his back.  "I'm afraid all I have are coffee cups to drink out of."

Carmen handed him the bag and sat down, saying, "Believe me, Colonel Tigh, I dropped all the social niceties a long time ago."  As he pulled out the unlabeled clear bottle and began to work on the long plastic stopper with his thumbs, she continued, "It's vodka.  At least I think it is.  My assistant Kirby has, er, a friend who knows someone …"

"That's okay, Doctor.  I'd just as soon not know.  I'd hate to have to arrest anyone.  And please call me Paul."

"Certainly … Paul.  And my name is Carmen, please."  The stopper popped out with a dry smacking sound, fell on the desktop and rolled drunkenly toward the edge.  Carmen caught it and her fingers absentmindedly stroked its roundness as she watched the Colonel fill two Fleet steel cups to the rim.  As he handed her one, she handed him the stopper.

"I don't believe I've ever drank vodka straight up," Carmen said.

The Colonel chuckled.  "Not much different from water until it hits your stomach."  After sitting down on the bed, he took a mouthful and with a slight jerk of his chin encouraged her to do the same.

She took a sniff and a good sip.  The liquid had almost no odor at all and even less flavor.  She tasted the cup's steel rim more than anything else.  But it had kick.  After oozing down her throat, it exploded in her gut like a nuclear bomb and sent shuddering shockwaves of relaxation both up to her scalp and down to her toes.

The Colonel had a beatific, worshipful look on his face.  "Doctor Massinger … Carmen.  You are my hero.  If there's anything I can do for you, just name it."

"You've already done more than I can thank you for, Paul."  He blushed again at that.  Such a bashful man.  The Colonel's reputation as a hard ass had him painted all wrong.  He was shy.

Carmen took another swallow of vodka, and without thinking about it, her hand took hold of the chair.  Her head had begun to float.  Kirby had said the stuff was a hundred proof, although without a quality-controlled distillery she wondered how he knew.

Arising from the chair she sat down next to the Colonel on his bed.  "I propose a toast," she said, raising her cup and clanking it against his.  "Let's drink to tonight."

The Colonel nodded.  "Tonight it is, and tomorrow be damned."  They drank together.  He smiled at her.  He was so close she could see every detail of his face, every small scar, wrinkle and age discoloration.  He looked male and wonderful.  Carmen had not been with a man since before Judgment Day.  Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was her gratitude, but he was affecting her.  It must have showed.  He leaned toward her and she didn't feel like moving away.  No, not at all.

And then his lips were on hers and he tasted even better than he looked.  His kiss was gentle and exploratory.  It asked rather than demanded and although it lasted long enough to get her heart beating fast and her head swimming, it wasn't nearly long enough.

After pulling away, the Colonel said, "Wow!"  He shook his head then made a face that drew every facial muscle tight.  He looked at her.  "I'm not sure if it's you or the vodka, but I'm getting a real buzz off of something."

Carmen laughed but she was a little concerned.  The Colonel had lost a great deal of color and eyes were unfocused.  "Why don't you just lie down for a few minutes, Paul?  I'm supposed to be on the next shuttle down to Zodiac.  I should I step over to CIC and tell them to take off without me."

He nodded as he sunk back.  "I think I'll just do that."  Turning on his side, he watched her go to the hatch.  "Don't stay away long," he called after her.

"I won't," she promised.

Out in the deserted passageway, Carmen took a second to orient herself.  The Commander's quarters were to the left and the third opening down, at the junction of the mid-ship cross passageway with this one.  That made the passageway to CIC to the right, down the stairwell and then the next two right turns.  As a geophysicist and mapmaker Carmen always made a point of figuring out locations and directions.  She took off.

The two marines who always stood at either side of the CIC's huge hatch nodded at her.  As part of the settlement team, she'd been around enough in the last month to become almost a crewmember.

Inside CIC Lieutenant Gaeta knelt on the deck taping down bundled cabling.  All over the tiered compartment men and women in orange coveralls labored with screwdrivers and wrenches while other men and women sat in chairs at screens and consoles trying to ignore them.  Before Judgment Day and the war, the Galactica's "brain box" must have been a tidy and organized place, but every time Carmen had been there over the last few years something had been under repair and parts and wiring had hung from the bulkheads or equipment like guts from a butchered carcass.  Tonight CIC looked more than half dismantled.  Row after row of consoles had been ripped up and removed.

"Doctor Massinger, what can I help you with?" Gaeta said as he straightened up.

Carmen told him and seconds later she was on a com. calling the compartment she'd been sharing with her son on the far side of Galactica a good fifteen-minute walk away.  Gil had more or less correctly assumed that his mother was responsible for his demobilization.  She'd been on the settlement team after all.  So they'd barely spoken for days.

"I thought you were in a hurry to start a new life, Mother," Gil said after she explained that she was going to wait for the next shuttle down.  He pronounced the word "mother" like an epithet.  "You wanted Zodiac, not me.  I should be staying here on the Galactica.  I should be with my friends and flying a Viper."

Carmen didn't have a chance to answer that because Gil hung up with a slam.  She didn't let it bother her.  He was going to live.  Nothing else mattered.  He'd eventually get over his teenage dreams of heroism.

After thanking Gaeta, she left CIC and made a quick way stop at the unisex head.  A few minutes later she arrived at the Colonel's hatch and this time she didn't knock.  Smiling to herself, she pulled it open.

"Hey, Paul.  You can sure tell the janitorial crew's been offloaded.  The head's a mess," Carmen said as she closed the hatch behind her.

There was no response.  "Paul?"  She walked into the compartment.  The Colonel was still exactly where she'd left him, but his eyes were closed and his mouth hung slackly open.  Sitting down on the bed, Carmen chided him as she shook a shoulder, "Hey, sleepyhead.  This is not doing my ego any good."

The Colonel didn't respond.  He didn't so much as twitch.  His breathing was slow.  Carmen was afraid to touch his face, but after a few hesitant jerks of her hand, she stroked his cheek.  "Paul?"  No response.  Worried now, with a thumb she pulled up an eyelid.  His pupil reacted to the light, but she wasn't quite sure what that meant other than that he was alive.  And even her finger in his eye hadn't brought him awake.

Coming to a decision, she stood up, hurried out into the empty passageway and down to the Commander's quarters.  She knocked hard.  "Commander Adama?  Commander, Sir?"

.

Time crawled.  That was the right word for it.  There were others -- "slithered," "tumbled," and "squeezed" -- all those words fitted some aspect of the desperate waiting Adama had felt for days, but "crawled" was by far the best.

Outside of the tiny porthole in the Commander's quarters -- his own private window on the universe -- specks of multi-colored light sparked in a thickly black midnight.  Although without the promise of a dawn, how could it be midnight at all?  The desk chrono. said twenty-four hundred, but it was the middle of the night only here on the Galactica and on the radioactive slagheap that had once been Picon Fleet Headquarters.  Everywhere else it was merely now.

Adama had given up trying to sleep.  He left the porthole, sat down at his desk and flicked on the desk lamp.  Pushing the chrono. to one side he opened a container of papers and began to sort them into three piles -- Zodiac, mission critical and trash.  If he couldn't sleep, he'd make himself useful.

He glanced at the top item -- a copy of Doctor Massinger's geophysical report.  It indicated that Zodiac's day clocked out 25 minutes and 18 seconds shorter than Picon's, and its year eight days longer.  Some numerically minded academic would make his name eternally famous by figuring out a new chrono. and calendar, probably by adding a new month he'd name after himself.

Adama threw Massinger's report in the trash.  The Galactica could have no links back to Zodiac on the Galactica.  Not even themselves if they were captured.  Tyrol had rigged a nuclear torpedo in the engine room for a self-destruct.

And long after they blew themselves to a bloody spray of protein and been forgotten, humanity would probably know the name of that frakkin' academic.  People were remembered for the damnedest reasons.

Take Adama's father, for example.  More than likely Colonel Campbell Adama wouldn't be remembered as a brave soldier and a fine pilot.  A hundred years from now, if humans even still existed as a species, the Colonel would be remembered for fathering among his five sons, one William.

It was so unfair, Adama thought.  His father had been a far better tactician, bringing one of the twelve original battlestars, the Europa, through the first Cylon war unscathed, while his scapegrace son William had graduated from the Academy in the bottom third of his class, mostly due to a regrettable tendency to frak around.  It had taken two years of combat and the loss of two brothers to burn it out of him.  Now Billy Keikeya wanted to record William Adama's failings for posterity and had asked him to ship down his personal papers.  It was enough to turn a man into a pyromaniac.

Adama considered the worn bundle of paper letters he held, browning at the edges and brittle at the folds.  After his divorce he'd moved everything he'd really valued onboard the Galactica, including a few keepsakes like these letters from his father.  He gently placed the bundle in one of the open boxes at his feet.  Sometimes the biographer became more famous than his subject.  Billy deserved a shot at renown.  For three years he'd been one of the vital lynchpins holding the Colonial government together.  And besides that, Adama had a whole new generation of children to think of -- both his son's and his own.  Maybe having a famous ancestor would give them a leg up.  Frak, and here he'd thought he was done with fatherhood for good.

Adama knew he wasn't the only one thinking of the future.  In twenty hours, the Galactica would finish off-loading everything and everyone not mission critical, and throughout the ship two hundred and twelve humans would be boxing up pieces of their lives for posterity.

On the bed Elena groaned and rolled over so she faced the desk.  Adama quickly bent his lamp away from her.  When she didn't wake up, he went back to his paper shuffling.

Adama had been at this for days.  Mostly it had been rote work to soothe nerves jangled by hysterical politicians, procedural hitches and mechanical traumas.  But occasionally it was painful.  Picking up a lined-through copy of Galactica's crew list he just stared at it, remembering.  After two-thirds of the crew had volunteered for their final mission, he and Tigh had had to pick out the mission team. He'd made hundreds of marginal notes about qualifications -- some of them none too kind.

He started when Elena said at his shoulder, "You should let one of your clerks to sort through that for you."  Pushing his robe down, she began massaging his shoulders.  "Why don't you come back to bed for a while?  You couldn't have slept more than two or three hours."

Adama tossed the crew list into the trash box, slipped an arm around Elena's legs and rubbed a stubbly cheek against her hip.  Breathing in the sweet scent of their earlier sex, he kissed firm muscle through a silky black something that was far more erotic than standard military pj's.  Lords knew where Elena had scrounged it up.  "You didn't get any more sleep than I did, Lights.  Why don't you go back to bed and I'll join you in a few minutes?"

She chuckled.  "Because you won't."  Her fingers brushed through his short hair.  Bending over she kissed his brow.  "Wait here," she said and left his arms cold and lonely.

"Wasn't planning on going anywhere."  Thank God for Elena, Adama thought as he watched her float across the room like a midnight cloud.  She'd held him together while his ship had come apart.

At the bulkhead Elena flicked the room lights then began rummaging in the carryall she'd been living out for the last week.  Holding up a half-liter bottle with a familiar label of a three-masted sailing ship, she asked, "Glasses?"

"Just the one in the head.  Where in the frak did you get ambrosia?"  An ATF sweep on the Brushfire six months ago had cleaned out the last known still, but this looked like the real thing from back on Caprica, more precious than gold.

Elena called out from Adama's private head, her voice reverberating inside the tiny space, "Medicinal supply off the Paracelsus.  Just told my pharmacist I needed a gift for the Commander, and he dug it out of his secret stash.  The man's a compulsive stockpiler, practically a packrat."  Emerging, she poured the clear plastic water cup half full of golden yellow and handed it to him.  "We'll have to share."

He swirled the ambrosia and took a sip.  "This really is Candle Sun."

Elena laughed as she hiked herself up, and sat on the edge of Adama's desk.  "Jerry only stashes the best."

Shaking his head, he took another sip.  "Amazing."

He handed the glass to Elena.  She took it but didn't drink, just stared thoughtfully into its depths.  From the look in her eye, Adama figured she had something on her mind. "Okay, spill it, Lights.  What's eating you?  Something going wrong with your baby project?"

Without lifting her head she looked at him.  "No, no.  I was just wondering … about Lieutenant Valerii.  Why it took so long to find her."

"You mean to find out she's Cylon?"

Elena nodded.  Taking a delicate sip from the water glass, she made a face.  Raw ambrosia can do that to the ill-prepared.

"Probably because she was the only one of her kind."

Elena's eyebrows lifted in a question.  She took another sip, this time without the face.

"On Judgment Day, someone -- I've always assumed it was Baltar -- left a note on my desk saying that there are only twelve human Cylon models."

Adama retrieved the glass of ambrosia and took his turn.  He was already feeling a slight buzz.  Lords, he must be getting old for it to take so little.  He continued, "You remember that chromosome cross-typing we had you do that first year?  Looking for matches?"

"Frak, how can I forget?  It took us three months." 

Standing up, Adama pushed Elena's legs apart and moved in between them.  The silky black gown went up too and his free hand stroked bare skin. 

Both of hers slipped under his robe and petted his chest muscles like he was a big spidercat.  She paused.  "Does the gene typing have something to do with the Cylons?  I don't understand.  I thought you were establishing family groups."

After Adama took another nip that warmed up both his throat and his head, he gave her the glass.  One of her hands left his chest to take it, but the other slipped down and around to his backside.  Despite the distraction, he replied, "Of a sort.  We were looking for unexplained twins."  He stepped closer and leaned into her, until their faces were mere centimeters apart.  His hands slid around her waist.

Her eyes on Adama's lips Elena murmured, "Yeah, I remember now."  Her face changed as she remembered something.  She pulled back slightly.  "Kimmy found an identical set of three and went off on this rant about why couldn't he be back on Caprica so he could write a paper and make himself famous."  Captain Kim Alterman, Elena's second in command, had died a few months ago in the last Cylon attack.

Elena, either remembering or trying to forget, moved her eyes away and swayed back from Adama as she took a drink.  He let her go.

Adama sighed.  The intimate moment had passed.  Stepping out from between Elena's legs Adama sat down at his desk once more.  "Kim couldn't have written a paper.  They were Cylons, three women scattered all over the fleet.  I've never told you, but with your crew's help we rooted out and executed sixteen spies."

Elena looked troubled.  "You're sure they were all Cylons?"  Doctors fought death.  They didn't like to cause it.

"Reasonably sure."  Taking her free hand Adama squeezed it.  "It was necessary, Lights.  A command decision.  We did our best to make sure."

Elena shuddered.  Passing him the ambrosia, she said, "But you didn't get all twelve models, I take it."

Adama looked into the glass.  There was only one swallow left.  He tossed it down before he said, "No, only seven models that time, including a couple of matches with Conoy and Doral.  But after that assassination attempt last year, we netted three more.  Remember your second batch of chromosome-typing?"

"Ten then."

Adama nodded.  "And when the Redleken caught Valerii we had eleven."  He knew what Elena must be thinking.  There was still one Cylon model left.  They'd barely had time to Redleken screen the Galactica's volunteer crew, much less the 40,000 civilians and demobilized military down on Zodiac.  Adama was sure there wasn't a Cylon left on the Galactica other than Valerii, but the planet below was another matter.

They were staring at each other when someone began pounding on the hatch.

.

Fumbling at the buttons of his uniform jacket Lee Adama ran down the passageway, Kara Thrace tight on his heels.  Minutes ago his ringing ship phone had rudely woken them in each other's arms.  If it hadn't been his father on the other end, Lee would have told the caller where to go.  Politely, of course, but firmly.  But his father's summons had been preemptory and specific.  Lee had been ordered to Colonel Tigh's quarters … immediately.  It would have been ludicrous if his father hadn't sounded so angry.

Lee had a bad feeling.  His father never qualified orders with words like "immediately" and he never, ever lost his temper.

Behind him Kara muttered a steady stream of invective, "You gotta be kidding.  Tigh's quarters at 2 a.m.?"  But she wasn't about to be left behind, and he wasn't about to order her.  They'd just found each other.  He put out his hand behind him and she grabbed it for a quick squeeze.

As they passed CIC Lieutenant Gaeta joined them.  He had the red leather-bound bridge coding manual in one hand and the command control lockout keys in the other.  Neither was supposed to leave CIC.  "Commander said to hurry," Gaeta told Lee as he pulled alongside.

Two more passageways and a stairwell and they arrived.  A medical corpsman was backing out of the Colonel's quarters, stepping carefully over the high sill, the handles of a collapsible stretcher in his hands.  The stretcher held the Colonel's long body lying on his side.  His face was so pale he looked blue.  Another corpsman walked alongside squeezing rhythmically on a rubber bag like device stuck in the Colonel's mouth.  A third followed carrying the other end of the stretcher.  The quartet of patient and caregivers headed down the passageway toward sickbay, their movement as coordinated and precise as a grand ballet.

This was definitely not good.  The Colonel had looked more than passed out.  He had looked half dead.

And within Tigh's quarters the Commander looked outraged.  He, Doctor Lighter and the geophysicist Massinger stood together in a small knot.  Off to one side, a corpsman was packing up a med kit.  Massinger was dressed, but his father and Doctor Lighter were both in robes and slippers.  Apparently Lee and Kara weren't the only ones who'd been in each other's arms tonight.

"He only had one drink," Massinger was saying.  "Just one.  I swear."  Her eyes were red rimmed and puffy.  She'd obviously been crying.

"Yeah, right.  Not in this lifetime," Lee heard Kara mutter behind him.  Lee had never seen the Colonel tight, but he'd heard the stories.

The Commander waved for Lee and Kara to come closer as Doctor Lighter asked Massinger, "And you drank out of the same bottle he did?"  She held up a half liter bottle filled with what looked like water.  A lot of it was gone.

Massinger nodded.  "It's supposed to be vodka.  I bou … … a friend gave it to me."  She sniffled.  Lee took a towel off the Colonel's wall rack and handed it to her.  A watery-eyed glance conveyed Massinger's thanks as she wiped her face and blew her nose.  The geophysicist seemed to spend a lot of time crying, first the breakdown at the committee meeting a few days ago, now this.  "Paul has been so kind.  I wanted to do a little something for him.  The techs said he enjoyed a drink now and then, so I thought … I didn't mean any harm.  Is he going to be alright?"

Doctor Lighter had removed the bottle's plastic stopper and sniffed the contents.  Making a face, she shook her head.  "We don't have the equipment left on Galactica to do a chemical analysis, but since Carmen here seems okay, I'm going to assume there's nothing wrong with this."

Lee nodded, remembering the rash of methyl alcohol poisoning deaths that had provoked the crack down on the stills.

The Commander growled, "Well, Doctor Massinger, sometimes good intentions aren't enough.  Why don't you go with Specialist Rockne here and he'll check you out just to make sure?"  He nodded to the corpsman who stepped forward, took Massinger by the elbow and led her away.

At the hatch, Gaeta briefly touched her arm and said, "I'll let Lieutenant Gregory know what's going on, Doctor."  For some reason that started her crying again.

Gaeta entered the compartment and joined Lee and Kara.  He whispered a question.  "How good an FTL navigator are you, Captain Adama?"

Lee glanced at him in surprise.  "I'm way out of practice.  I haven't plotted a jump in five or six years.  Why?"

Kara had been staring at the Commander, a worried expression on her face.  She looked at Gaeta and before he could open his mouth to reply to Lee, she asked, "Who's next after Tigh in the chain of command for this mission?  It's Lee, isn't it?"

The look on Gaeta's face said it all.

While they'd been talking Doctor Lighter had swept up a small handful of pill vials off Colonel Tigh's desk and begun reading the labels.  "Oh frak," she said with feeling.  She turned to the Commander who'd been glaring after Massinger with an expression hot enough to melt bolts.  "Bill, I have to get down to sickbay.  Paul needs …"  She stopped and said, "Oh frak," again, this time with even more passion.  "You've offloaded all the sickbay equipment and supplies, haven't you?"  It was practically a cry of pain.

His dad turned to look at Doctor Lighter, his face concerned.  "Yes, pretty much.  How bad is he?"

"Bad enough."  She looked up into his eyes.  "He's not going to fly to the Cylon home world with you, Bill.  How fast can I get him on a shuttle to Zodiac?"

The Commander's face clouded.  "Fifteen minutes soon enough?"  The Doctor nodded sharply and she turned to go, her attention all focused on taking care of her patient.  The Commander called after her.  "I'll send your clothes down."

Sighing, he turned back to Lee, Kara and Gaeta with his head hung down and fists clenched.  For a moment he wasn't a battlestar commander, but a tired and worried old man whose best friend had been hauled away on a stretcher.  Lee put a hand on his father's shoulder and asked, "Dad, are you going to be okay?"

The Commander's head came up with his power mask already back in place  "I'm fine, Lee.  Lieutenant Thrace, find a working ship phone.  Saul's phone has been out for months.  Get that shuttle prepped A.S.A.P.  Captain, Lieutenant, you're with me."

In another moment the Colonel's quarters had emptied out.  After dousing the lights and closing the hatch behind him, Lee jogged down the deserted passageway to catch up with his father and Gaeta who were already talking together in low tones.

.

Lee shook the coffee carafe to see if there was any left.  There wasn't.  Since all the mess hall staff had disembarked, if he went down there, he'd have to personally make some more.  Maybe later before he started studying, but right now he needed to talk to his father.

After Gaeta had finished going over the bridge coding manual with Lee, he'd left to catch a few hours of sleep before they were due in CIC for a run-through on the realigned ship controls. 

Lee already knew quite a bit about Galactica's operating systems. During the last three years of war the old war wagon had been battered like a hockey puck and had been in constant repair.  When Lee and his pilots weren't flying Vipers they'd helped out the decimated maintenance crews, doing everything from wiring to plumbing to sheet metal work.  They'd all learned a great deal fast.  But the Galactica had been turned topsy-turvy for this final mission, and Lee would need an intensive brush-up if he was going to fly as X.O.

The Commander had used Gaeta's lesson time to get dressed and he now sat in uniform across the conference table from Lee.  He had a small tight smile that Lee recognized as nervous tension.  Given the loss of a key officer, the Commander might very well be re-examining the wisdom of their attack plan.  He and Tigh were close.  Working as a team they'd saved the Galactica and the Fleet time and time again over the last three years.

Even battlestar commanders sometimes need encouragement, and when appropriate it was one of the X.O.'s jobs to give it.  Lee told his father, "We're doing the right thing, you know.  It's still necessary."

"Is it?" he asked.  "We could wait a week until Paul can fly again."

"You can't be certain he'll be ready."  Lee picked up one of the file folders scattered around the tabletop, pulled it open and shoved the file across the table.  "And from what Gaeta showed me here, we'll be lucky if Boomer lasts a few more days."  Lee hadn't seen Valerii since her capture, but from Gaeta's description she was living on air, water and wishful thinking.  The Redleken generator that helped her control her inner Cylon was also killing her.

The Commander just glanced at the open file but didn't pick it up.  His eyes were mostly for his son.  "Are you sure you're ready for this, Lee?"

With his father, Lee had always found honesty was the best policy.  "Frak, no.  But I never will be completely ready, not in a year, not in two years.  I'm not you, Dad.  I don't have tylium for blood.  I'm just a humble Viper pilot, but I think I can make noises like an X.O. long enough to pull this off.  I know the plan, I know you and I know most of Galactica."

They looked steadily at each other.  His father broke first.  Shaking his head, he told Lee, "I just wish to hell there was some other way.  You're my son.  I want you to …"

Lee was probably the only officer on the Galactica who dared to break in on his father's train of thought.  "If there was another way, I'm sure you would have thought of it, Sir.  You're the finest commanding officer I've ever served under.  You have no idea how proud I am that you're my father."

That brought the Commander up short.  A slow, soft smile stole across his face and he answered Lee, "You have no idea how proud I am that you're my son."

They sat for a moment in the awkward silence that strong emotion often evokes in men, not quite daring to look at each other because they were afraid of what they might say or do.  "Well, you'd better tell Kara, get some food and read as much of that as you can before Gaeta's back up.  And I'd recommend that sequence.  Kara's going to be fit to be tied," the Commander finally said but when he looked at Lee his eyes said something more.  His mouth could have been reciting the Colonial anthem for all the difference it made, because his eyes were saying, "I love you."

"Yes, Sir.  I'm going down there right now," Lee answered, but his eyes spoke too and what they said was just as true.  "I love you too."


	11. Chapter 10a

"Oh Lords, there is nothing hidden from you.  
You hold the future in your hands."

A crackly wireless signal and the booming feedback of the PA system distorted Mother Elosha's voice reciting the opening lines of the battle prayer. They were already five hours sublight travel out from the surface of Zodiac. The holy mother had actually said the words almost ten minutes ago and the sound quality didn't matter too much because every volunteer on Galactica had learned the words in the cradle.

Captain Lee Adama, formerly the Galactica's CAG and on this final mission her X.O., walked over to the communications station. Along with Specialist Amy Krebold's normal duties at fire control she was also acting as com. officer. She nodded to him, pursed her lips and twirled a few analog dials. Elosha's voice came through stronger and clearer.

"You guard us in the early watches.  
You protect us in the depths of space."

On the other side of the overhead draedus screens Lee's father, Commander William Adama, stood looking up at the backlit green and glass tactical display. On the display's right side, someone had sketched in their best guess as to the Cylon home system based on Valerii's babbling. Down the left side written in white grease pencil were the coordinates and duration of the three successive FTL jumps that would take them there. A primly and properly turned out Lieutenant Gaeta already had a cloth clasped in a tightly fisted hand ready to erase each jump's coordinates as it was completed. The tactical display and Gaeta's and Lee's brains held the only records of their flight path back to humanity's refuge. The plotting computer had been set for a full wipe after each jump completion.

"You hold the secrets of the past in your hearts.  
You are our strength and our salvation."

Lee could see the Commander's lips move as they recited the words along with the two hundred and ten other volunteers on the Galactica. Viewed from this angle Lee's father seemed calm, almost peaceful, but when the rugged, scarred face looked down and the Commander's eyes locked with his son's, Lee saw the hungry, wolfish gleam of the warrior. The eyes said, At last we're actually going to do something besides run.

"You are the beginning and  
You are the end."

All forty of the civilian ships had landed on the Zodiac, their tylium tanks dry. Galactica had taken every spare drop of fuel left for her marathon of FTL jumps. Her tanks were three-quarters full. It was more than enough to get her there, fight a running battle and perhaps even get her back. If the Lords flew with them.

The last box of personal effects and the last non-combatant had landed on Zodiac. The landing bays had locked shut. The batteries were charged, and the primary turrets and counter-fire artillery had been loaded with the last of their ammunition. Everyone on board carried a loaded side arm strapped to the hip. The infiltration party carried several, except of course for the thing that they had once called Sharon Valerii. As Lee had helped Kara prep the Cylon drone he had seen it stumble up the loading ramp like a walking skeleton, white, thin and loose-jointed.

The Galactica was ready for war.

"Give us courage as we enter battle  
And strength to win your holy victory."

Lee's own lips stiffly formed the words of the prayer. As CAG he had been part of mission planning from the beginning and had approved the issuance of suicide pills, but that was different from carrying one around in his pocket. Two hours ago a med. tech had handed him a red capsule with instructions to "bite it open for quickest results." Lee had been sitting in the mess hall with Kara eating a last, tasteless meal of cold meat and colder coffee.

"It's cherry flavored, I hope?" Kara had quipped as the med. tech had checked off both of their names on his list. The tech hadn't laugh. He'd probably heard enough bravado already, and if they were captured like all on board the tech had sworn to take the pill. Not everyone looked suicide in the face and tried to laugh.

Kara had dropped her pill in an exterior flight suit pocket. She'd have to pop her helmet to swallow it. Lee had put his in the inside breast pocket of his uniform jacket. They hadn't talked about it, but after the tech had left, Kara's shaking hands had held on to Lee's for a long time. Or maybe it had been Lee's hands that had shook. Adrenalin, he reminded himself. Just adrenalin.

Besides the individual suicide pills, everyone in CIC had been told how to activate the self-destruct torpedo -- a coded pad and a simple toggle switch under the central console.

Elosha's prayer had reached the last couplet.

"May your dominion and peace  
Encompass the universe in everlasting glory."

As the prayer finished, the eyes of six of the people in CIC turned to the seventh, the Commander. He looked steadily back as they all firmly recited,

"So say we all."

The Commander had never let his soldiers back down or slack off from their pledge to protect humanity. They said the words to him as a renewal of that commitment.

Besides the CIC throughout the ship the closing words were repeated -- in the four dorsal gun batteries, the starboard and port batteries, the rail gun fire cab, the engine room, the damage control station, the launch bay, the re-worked Cylon drone and in the forty-two Vipers, each of them ready and waiting to fling themselves into the last and most glorious fire fight in the history of mankind, all the way from the newly appointed CAG Lieutenant Keener at the head of the line back to Rat Frak at the tail.

A wavering, weak female voice replaced Elosha's on the wireless. It was President Roslin. "Galactica, with the grace granted me as President of the Twelve Colonies I bless your mission. May the Holy Lords and the great Creator God speed you on your way, stand by you in battle and bring you home safely. The prayers of all humanity go with you."

The Commander had been walking over to the communications console as the President spoke, and when she finished, he picked up the microphone and answered the necessary formal farewell, "On behalf of the two hundred and eleven men and women on board the Galactica, President Roslin, I say 'thank you.' May the Holy Lords watch over you all until our return." They were too far out to hold a meaningful conversation. The President wouldn't even hear the Commander's words for another eleven minutes.

Adama nodded to Lee. "Begin jump prep, Captain."

Gaeta stood ready at Lee's elbow. Lee turned to him and said, "Set course for our first jump point, Lieutenant."

They were on their way.

.

After the Commander's last words of farewell died away on the wireless, Lieutenant Kara Thrace let her hand squeeze the drone's unarmed control stick. She couldn't see nor hear Kelly's landing party strapped down behind her since she was the mission pilot and per Fleet regulations she wore a sealed pressure suit. "Hey Kelly!" she yelled and tapped the side of her helmet to remind him to turn on his mike.

Her earphones clicked instantly. "Sorry, Starbuck," Kelly said. "How long do you think?"

"We're moving," Kara answered. "Maybe two or three minutes more normal space flight to first jump post then Gaeta'll squawk condition 2 for a minute and we'll jump. After that we go from there."

"We go from there …" Kelly repeated after her in a quiet murmur. Kara had a lot of respect for Captain Kelly, but right now she suspected he needed some bucking up. It happens to the best of them.

"How's Boomer doing?" she asked.

After Lee had left the drone to take up his post in CIC, Kara had needed something to do. It was either that or sit down on the deck and steam up the inside of her flight helmet with tears and a runny nose. So she'd helped Kelly's tech specialist install the portable Redleken device on the weakly struggling Valerii's shaved head, gluing each electrode exactly where he told her. Chief Tyrol had been working on the helmet every minute for the last three or four days. He'd managed to get its charge capacity up to over three hours.

"She's lucid. Too weak for any kind of run, though. Private Gamert's standing by carry her if need be." At 200 centimeters and 100 kilograms Gamert was the biggest man aboard the Galactica. He was a damned good marine too and knew a million jokes. Valerii, Gamert, Kelly, Heppenmeier and two recent recruits that Kara had met twenty minutes ago for the first time constituted the landing party. Except for Valerii, they were all helmeted, dressed in environmental suits and armed to the gills with both hard shot and electromagnetic weapons. Valerii was dressed in a deckhand jumper and rubber-soled shoes. She was relatively clean so either someone had given her a bath or hosed her down, probably the latter.

Their landing party had been designated Angel Host, Kelly Angel One. Kara and the Cylon drone were Fiery Chariot. The Galactica was Ninth Heaven. The target was Hell. Valerii was the Devil.

"I can get there," Kara heard Boomer's voice in the background. "You just set us down, Starbuck. Let me do the rest."

Kara tried to twist around to look at the boarding party. The harness held her too tight. She gave a thumbs-up over her shoulder instead.

Any second now Gaeta's familiar voice would come over the wireless. Any second now. Through her heavy suit gloves Kara's finger tried to work Lee's ring on her thumb. They'd finally understood each other. They'd finally come together. It had been wonderful. Heavenly. Saying goodbye had been Hell.

Kara's earphones blatted static then Gaeta's familiar chant: "Set condition two throughout the ship. Set condition two throughout the ship." At last.

.

Back almost fifty years ago when the Galactica had been built, she'd had four exterior cameras, mostly for show because given the enormous distances of space and the limitations of glass lens -- even digitally enhanced by computer analysis -- the cameras rarely provided useful information. During the three years since Judgment Day two of the four cameras had been damaged and left un-repaired.

But they still had port and starboard views and Gaeta's re-wiring of the CIC had placed the monitors at his tactical station, which had been relocated next to the FTL engine control. After their first jump the lieutenant had an exclusive view of the blazing white, pink and orange Slasenger Nebula. The battlestar's next jump took her away from the decades-wide drift of charged gas and dust to a part of space so black that only a handful of stars gleamed like colored diamonds set in velvet. They had moved to the galactic rim where stars were much further apart.

Each time as the ship had gathered itself and leapt through time, space and reality Gaeta had kept his hand resting on the gleaming blue jump key. He and tall, dark-skinned Specialist Anderson stood over the FTL jump console double and treble-checked each other as they extracted each completed jump from computer memory and called up the next. Captain Adama had taken the wipe cloth from Gaeta and as each jump was completed wiped out the coordinates from the tactical display.

For the time being the normal space helm was more or less a dead stick. They were FTL jumping in succession and had no need for piloting yet.

Gaeta had FTL jumped the Galactica almost fifty times now since Judgment Day, but the power that he was controlling still thrilled him. Nothing else would have torn him away from his wife and daughter. He loved them but one last opportunity to command time and space to his bidding had been something he couldn't pass up. And the Commander had asked Gaeta to review the FTL combat tactics manual in depth. He was ready. He was more than ready -- he was eager to end the Cylon war with whatever it took.

The Galactica was in countdown for the last jump that would take them to the battlefield. "… eight, nine, ten. Jumping now," Gaeta intoned for the benefit of the ship at large and the X.O. and Commander in particular. And once more the Galactica's FTL engines pulled the ship apart here and put her back together again way over there.

.

"Report location," Lee Adama barked as he watched the central draedus console flicker and re-organize itself with new information.

Specialist Anderson looked up from the FTL station where Lieutenant Gaeta was deleting their last jump coordinates and preparing the jump-clear in case they found themselves under immediate fire. Anderson sidestepped to a re-wired navigation station and peered into a screen. Its ghostly green light reflected off his face. "We're nineteen thousand seventy-eight, uh, point three klicks from a G-class planet in solar orbit around a yellow sun, two moons, a great deal of electromagnetic activity." He looked up at Lee and the Commander. "We appear to have achieved the target location, Sir."

"Excellent," the Commander grunted. Turning to the draedus overhead, he asked, "But do we have any company?"

Lee hopped up one level to stand behind a middle-aged crew-cut man. His name was Casper and he knew everything there was to know about reading draedus signals. The Commander joined them, standing below on the other side of the console. Casper said, "Closest contact is at eleven thousand six hundred klicks and appears to be bound for the planet, Sir." He pressed a few keys, fine-tuned a dial. "I'm not sure how many contacts there are all told. The draedus doesn't recognize the class. They're in a tight, evenly distributed formation around the planet. I've never seen anything like it."

Looking over his shoulder, Lee could see what he meant. The planet ahead looked something like a pincushion surrounded by hundreds of tiny dots, each marked with "u/k" for unknown by the draedus analyzer. The screen was so crowded with glowing type that it was hard to read. Nothing was moving their way.

"They haven't seen us yet," Lee murmured to himself.

"It won't take them long," the Commander said. He turned back to Gaeta. "Give Fiery Chariot the FTL coordinates for her run-and-jump then launch her."

"Yes, Sir."

Lee tried not to think about Kara flying off on her mission. Her Cylon drone appeared briefly as an enemy bogey on the close-range draedus then it disappeared.

The Commander turned to Lee. "Let's go make war, Captain." He smiled as he said it.

Somewhere inside him Lee found the nerve to smile back. "Amy," he said to the com. station. "Tell the launch bay to insert Vipers and prepare for launch." Turning to where Anderson and Gaeta had taken up stations at the ship's stick, he continued, "Helm, set a course for Hell."


	12. Chapter 10b

"You guys got those mouth guards in yet?"  Starbuck's voice sounded cheerful on the com.  Kelly had flown with her on a few missions over the last three years and had already pegged her as an adrenalin junkie.  As long as a battle raged she'd be jumping her juice.

They'd just burst out of FTL like the proverbial bat out of hell, except instead of jumping out of hell, they'd jumped into it.

"Not yet, but we got 'em right here.  Is it time?" Kelly fired back.  He couldn't see Starbuck's face, just the blank silver backside of her helmet, and he'd had to shout into the mike to be heard over the engine.  Unlike Starbuck's airtight getup, his combat helmet had no faceplate and the drone screamed like an angry banshee.  Its rudimentary gravity generator pitched them around like they were in a howdah on the back of a drunken oliphant.  Kelly had thought the Raptor's chancy gimbals made for a bad ride, but the Cylons had built their drones with death in mind, not passenger comfort.

"No," Starbuck answered.  "We may have a problem.  Could ya come up here and look?"

"Frak," Kelly muttered.

A new recruit named Gaines had his arms wrapped around the crucial poison pill transmitter that Tyrol had concocted from the drone's AI.  Gaeta had programmed it with a shutdown order using Doctor Baltar's notes, some tests on Valerii and a history book in the Commander's private collection about the designer of the original Cylon model, a yokel Kelly had never heard of, some cybernetics guy named Gabriel Sochard, who in the Cylon Corporation's early sales campaigns had claimed his creations could be rendered perfectly harmless with a simple command.  The book's title was _War Merchant_.  Unfortunately, Sochard had disappeared before the first Cylon war without providing the command to the human war effort.  His disappearance had remained an unexplained mystery, although during the early war years, cynics had assumed he'd orchestrated the whole thing to boost sales.  It was just as likely the Cylons had taken him out.  If he were still alive, he'd be pushing 100.

Doctor Baltar had always thought Sochard had used some personal reference for his shutdown order command, so Gaeta had programmed the transmitter to burst broadcast the entire text of _War Merchant_ along with some other best-guess possibilities.  Colonel Tigh had joked that they should transmit the entire Colonial dictionary.  "No proper names in the dictionary," Gaeta had deadpanned.  Gaeta had no discernable sense of humor.  Apparently, guessing the Cylon shutdown code had been a popular evening news game during the early weeks of the first war, before the fateful bombing of Taurus City.  Fleet Intelligence had taken over then with no luck.  After the armistice, no one had cared anymore and Sochard's name had sunk into obscurity.  The Cylons had achieved a sort of moral emancipation -- they were hated in their own right and no human dared remember they'd once been property.

In some ways the poison pill transmitter resembled a chrome-toaster Cylon head, a red light pulsating back and forth across one surface like a hideous metronome without the click, click, click.  It would transmit the shutdown order via light waves once Valerii found them the right place.

The other new recruit whose name escaped Kelly at the moment carried their heaviest firepower -- a combination flamethrower and super-cooled machine gun.  They weren't going to try for subtlety.  And since Gamert was to keep his hands free in case Valerii needed to be carried, Kelly handed the Redleken helmet control to Heppenmeier, un-strapped and crawled on hands and knees -- it seemed safest -- until he knelt next to the pilot's seat.  He held on its back to keep his balance.  "What is it, Thrace?" he growled.

A suited finger tapped a draedus delineated screen image that looked like a beach ball surrounded by fireflies, each fly with a pair of wings reading 'u/k.'  "Looks like Hell might have a satellite defense screen."  Starbuck glanced sideways at him.  "What did the Devil say about this?"

Kelly shook his head.  "She babbles about 'God and His Sweet Chilluns' most of the time.  Can you get us an eyeball view?"

Starbuck made a noise like a snorting horse.  "If you don't mind 'em peeking in, yeah sure.  Tyrol figured out how to depolarize the shield."

"We'll have to chance it.  Are we being tracked?"

The seals on Starbuck's suit creaked as she shook her head.  "There's a group at nine o'clock, maybe twenty minutes away.  Two more at the edge of sensor range, at least an hour away at sub-light.  Plenty of low traffic zipping close down to the planet surface, but no one's heading for us yet.  We're cool."

Kelly looked up at the curved black glass that was the drone's forward bulkhead.  "Get us a view of the planet, and I'll see what I can get out of Valerii."  Awkwardly shuffling around on his knees, he turned to go.  He said back over his shoulder, "And if you can do something about this frakkin' pitchin' around …"

One of Starbuck's hands waved a "yeah, sure."  The other one was already tweaking the control panel.  As Kelly moved back toward Valerii and his men, he felt the ship stabilize.  The engine noise died.  They were cruising without power.  Kelly got to his feet.  Only babies crawled.

A moment later he was crouched beside Valerii.  Frak, she looked like shit, a living ghost.  Although her head was up and she was staring past Kelly at the front bulkhead, which must be completely see-through by now, she had no strength for anything else and leaned limply against her restraining straps like they were the only thing keeping her from falling to the deck, which they were.  Heppenmeier held out the helmet control, and Kelly turned down the gain to help her.

Kelly looked over his shoulder to see what she was looking at.  A G-class planet almost filled their view.  Plenty of white clouds trimmed the huge ball as was standard for a G, but instead of the usual blue, brown and green planet surface, there was an ugly dark gray.  It almost looked like the whole planet had been paved over.  A few of Starbuck's satellites stood out as sharp, dangerous pinpricks of black against innocently white clouds.  They would have to get past the satellites to land, but once close to the surface, according to Valerii, Cylon central control would be as obvious as a carbuncle on his grandpa's skinny ass.  Kelly certainly hoped so.  They wouldn't have all that much time before the Galactica started kicking up a fuss for a distraction and threw Shiva at the planet.

Flipping his helmet mike out of the way, Kelly took Valerii's chin and pulled her face to his.  "What are they, Sharon?  What the frak are they?  You'd better tell us fast.  We're going to be there in a few minutes."

Her bruised brown eyes slid away from his, trying to return to the planet view.  "They're God's plan, his special babies.  He's going to send them out to decontaminate the whole of creation."

Kelly looked at the planet once again.  The pinpricks had grown to the size of perfectly round sand grains.  According to Starbuck's draedus display each of them massed about ten times the Galactica.  He turned back to her and asked, "They're robots?"

She just nodded, her expression almost dreamy.  "Children of God.  They carry the perfect fire.  When they find an organic intelligence infection, they'll sterilize, and when they're all done the universe will be clean once again."

"Oh frak," Kelly muttered.  In their single-minded insanity the Cylons were creating an intelligent arsenal determined to wipe out anything that breathed.  Apparently it hadn't been enough to kill humans.  They were going to destroy life.

_One impossibility at a time,_ Kelly thought.  First I'll destroy the Cylon home world, then I'll destroy this frakkin' fleet.  Yeah, right.

Valerii's tired eyes looked back to Kelly.  She smiled and for a moment, the Raptor pilot that he'd flown with over the past three years returned.  "Don't you worry, Cap, they're not turned on yet.  Dead as so many doornails."

"You're sure?" Kelly asked, but he'd already lost her focus.  She was staring past him once again.

He pulled his helmet mike back down to his mouth.  "You get all that, Fiery Chariot?"

"Every word, Angel One.  If the road's open, I'm going in before they start looking at me too closely.  You'd better strap down again and get out those mouth guards."

.

Every Viper pilot served a CIC internship during training so Lee had been in there during a combat launch before.  But that had been a lifetime ago on the Atlantia during war maneuvers.  Since Judgment Day, he'd always flown his own bird.  To him, being in here for a battle felt like being wrapped in cotton wool, all the action muffled with distance.

So far only one deathstar had deigned to investigate their arrival, which was both good and bad news -- good that they wouldn't be pulverized into assorted molecules without firing a single shot and bad because for this mission to have even the faintest chance of success, they needed to keep most of the Cylons' attention concentrated on them.  If they didn't have it, they had to get it, hopefully by blowing up something just to add to the fun.  So that was the first order on their menu -- one Cylon deathstar, deep-fried.

"All Vipers are launched, Sir," Amy Krebold's deep female voice announced.

On the speaker overhead, Keener's tight, clipped voice gave his squadron last minute instructions.  "Remember to fly as erratic as a firebug with a mosquito up its ass.  Watch your wingman and keep your eye on where the Galactica's shootin'!  She's gonna take out Papa Bug for us."  The usual stuff.  Lee had said pretty much the same thing in every engagement since Judgment Day.  His pilots had always listened, some of them had obeyed.  A few had come back.

Over at the draedus Casper called out his bad news.  "Deathstar is launching fighters.  I'm counting, uh, seventy-two."  Lee glanced at Casper.  He was pale, and his eyes were as round as quarter cubits.

Since ordering the Viper launch, the Commander had said nothing, just watched and listened, but when Casper finished, he turned to Amy's com station and barked, "Get me the dorsal gun crews on the phones."  A few seconds later he was talking into a headphone mike that he held in his hand.  "It's going to be up to you boys to make every shot count.  Wait for the X.O.'s command, then pick your target on the deathstar and plaster her until she comes apart.  May the Lords and our most holy creator God guide your aim."

For the rail gun and the dorsal heavies, they had enough ammunition for about twenty minutes of engagement, no more.  For the smaller port and starboard suppression cannons that protected the Vipers, they had less than ten minutes worth.

To Gaeta at the helm, the Commander said, "Hold us steady Lieutenant and prepare for a one hundred eighty degree roll if the port cannons run out of ammo."  Gaeta acknowledged with a crisp nod and a murmur, his eyes on his engine room readouts.  The FTL engines were still powered up, a highly dangerous proposition since the FTLs were as touchy as hell; and if the Galactica took a major hit in the engine area, it would all over for them, their Vipers, the Cylon fighters, the deathstar and anything else within a hundred klicks.  There wouldn't even be a dust cloud because the FTL field would scatter their molecules to every quarter of Creation.

For a moment the Commander stared up at the draedus which already showed their Vipers bashing on the enemy bogies.  The green lights from the displays glinted off his glasses and made his eyes opaque and unreadable.  However, a pair of tight, chapped lips revealed the Commander's state of mind.  To Lee, he said, "You may commence firing, X.O."

Lee had moved to stand behind Amy Krebold, whose console controlled the suppression fire cannons that bristled in two long deadly rows down Galactica's port and starboard.  "Let her rip, Specialist, port-side cannons only.  Order the dorsal batteries to fire as they bear."

"Yes, Sir," Amy's hands danced over her console as she murmured quietly into her headset.

The draedus became a complicated dance of light as the shells sped toward the target.  Casper threw up a different read on the overhead, one that tracked incoming shells only.

The deathstar had begun firing too and a barrage was headed their way.  Lee watched as five Vipers peeled off from engaging Cylon fighters to chase them down.

A buzzer went off.  "Radiological alarm," Amy Krebold said.  She leaned forward to look at a screen.  "Two of those are nukes."

On the draedus the trajectories plotted for the shells and the Vipers intersected on the other side of the Galactica.  Keener's kids had better be damned good shots, frakkin' damned good shots, or they were going to be forced into an FTL hop they didn't want to make.  Or they were going to be toast.

.


	13. Chapter 10c

Kara didn't know what the Cylons called their home world, although a long string of hexadecimal code seemed likely -- something on the order of "beep-beep-boop-boop-bop."  CIC had labeled it "Hell," a good pick, but as Kara flew down through its atmosphere she came up with something better -- Maelstrom.

On most G-class planets the powerful upper troposphere winds calmed down within a klick or two of the planet surface, but on Maelstrom aka Hell, low turbulence was still corkscrewing them around like an ice cube in a mixed drink as Kara brought them on their proposed landing site.  They'd passed through the screen of satellites without a hitch.

Valerii had been right about Cylon Central Control.  It had been a dead giveaway.  Maelstrom was as flat as a parking lot and devoid of both water and vegetation -- except for one fifty-square-mile area that could have been Caprica City in mid-summer.  Long-range scans had revealed streets, trees -- the works.  It lay before them, a single huge tower in its center and the rest of the city laid out like a park.

But as the saying goes, getting there was more than half the fun.  If the drone had handled poorly over Zodiac, it was a frakkin' impossibility here.  To add to Kara's aggravation, the grav generator had automatically conked out when it registered Maelstrom's field, and approaching the ground her mental horizon went into a tailspin.  The drone's stick vibrated like a sex toy, her hands were almost numb, and her arms were about to fall off from fighting the frakkin' thing.  Tyrol should have put in a copilot seat so one of Kelly's brutes could sit up here and help.  Too late for that now.

On the upside, their flaky flight path added plenty of credibility to the emergency landing cover story that Gaeta had programmed.  A touch on the big red "idiot" button on the com console would broadcast it to Cylon Central.  They should be getting a warn-off any second now -- or a cannon shot.

The drone's com bleeped in Kara's helmet phones and the monitor lit up with alphabet soup, which after a rippling pass of Gaeta and Tyrol's translation program re-arranged itself into intelligence.  "Deflect or be destroyed in thirty seconds," the screen said.

"Jam it up your ass," Kara muttered, but licked dry lips.  Show time.  With a thick, suited thumb, she pushed Gaeta's red idiot button and transmitted the Cylon equivalent of, "Sorry, bud.  My tail's on fire.  Need to set down pronto."

In seconds they'd either be vaporized or cleared for emergency landing.

A new ladleful of Cylon alphabet soup poured into her monitor.  The translation program rippled through and it formed a single word: "Cleared."

Kara snorted.  Just like that, huh?  Apparently, like Valerii had claimed, the Cylons didn't waste valuable resources protecting the old home site against a low probability attack mounted by certifiably insane humans, who were after all, almost extinct.  It wouldn't be logical.  After announcing to Kelly, "We're a go.  Be ready to rock and roll as soon as we stop moving," she focused on the rapidly approaching sea of green.

The thing that still considered itself to be Sharon Valerii was vaguely aware that she rode in a Cylon drone and that she was approaching the source of what her God had called 'love.'  Even through the nauseating Redleken waves she could feel the emotional tug of the Cylon billions below her.

But she kept herself focused on one thought, one certainty:  Despite what her God was telling her, that tug on her mind wasn't love, not human love like she'd shared with Boxy and with Galen.  The memory of that made it easier for her to fight back against the insidious Cylon worms wiggling around in her mind.  For love of Boxy and Galen she'd survive, may the lords help her, if she could.

So when Starbuck landed the drone with a heavy jolt, a jump and a shudder Sharon knew what she had to do.

"You still alive, Valerii?" Kelly asked as he unbuckled her and hauled her to her feet.  That great lump Private Gamert leaned close and offered a ride.  She shook her head 'no' but wasn't too proud to lean against him as she stood swaying.

While the ramp was dropping down, Starbuck argued with Kelly.  The plan gave Kelly the option to leave his pilot here to keep the drone ready for a fast dust off.  Starbuck didn't like that at all and snarled, "I'd rather die fighting than running," but sat back down in the pilot's chair.  Her helmet visor distorted her facial expression by it didn't look nice.

"She'll wait," Kelly grunted to Gamert.

Like hell she will, Sharon thought as she stumbled out into bright daylight and the rumbling and clanking activity of the city square.  She'll be along.  It's in her nature.

.

On the draedus Commander Adama watched the Vipers try to keep death away from the Galactica.  There was nothing he could do to help them except keep pounding on the deathstar.  Damn that was a big bastard, the biggest he'd ever seen.  The 'stars that had been tracking them for the past three years had been less than half its size.

Adama held on to the edge of the cracked chart table and tried to keep his breathing and expression calm.  If he stayed calm, so would everyone else in CIC.

On a bulkhead a big red digital readout showed their fired shot tally.  It continued to mount, the numerals in the furthest right column a blur.  The first shells from the dorsal batteries had glanced off the deathstar's radiating arms.  Within fifteen seconds, the gun crews had readjusted and fired again.  Those rounds would arrive on target any second.  If they were very, very lucky they'd hit a soft spot -- a launch tube, landing bay or the open end of a maneuvering thruster.

Three of the Vipers out there carried nukes to launch at the deathstar, but they had to get close enough, which they were trying to do right now, circumventing the dog fight.  One of the three had already been blown up.  If only they'd had another ten Vipers.  And while you're wishing, Adama scolded himself, why don't you wish up another battlestar?  He shook his head and looked around CIC.  Anderson was hurrying over to the helm to relieve Gaeta, who was running for the FTL console.

The Galactica's landing pods had been kept locked shut and the board was green for a jump, but the Viper squadron held the Galactica in place.  To FTL now meant abandoning them, since the battlestar couldn't jump back.  FTLing around in an active combat site or even close by was danger business.  Hundreds of unexploded wild shots became fast, untrackable contact mines, and if the Galactica jumped on top of one those, even something as small as a five-ought could take them out.  The FTL field multiplied yields a thousand times.

Adama didn't want to lose all the Vipers in his first engagement; but if he had to, he'd jump clear and find more deathstars to beat on.  He had to keep every frakkin' one of those red Cylon eyes on the Galactica.  The boys knew it was a possibility.  Frak, it was a likelihood.

Lee still stood behind Krebold and had picked up a spare set of phones.  He was probably listening to the Viper traffic.  Suddenly raising a fist above his head, he let out a yell and the draedus started jumping.

Adama hoped like hell that was one or both of the nukes.

.

Lieutenant Eric Widen, also known as Rat Frak for reasons he didn't want to think about and would never tell his mother, had watched as a large Cylon fighter had launched two nuclear missiles at the Galactica.  Along with the other two closest Vipers he had immediately broken off and pursued.  Just like Starbuck had taught him in his initial Viper training a year ago, the Rat jammed his stick up all the way and held it there.  "You get a hundred, maybe two hundred k-p-h beyond rating if you hold it to the bar.  One of those little undocumented tricks you'll pick up if you live long enough."

Rat Frak wanted to live long enough to learn all the tricks, but it was crazy out here.  Space was almost solid with the white streaks of tracer rounds, what with the Galactica pounding on the deathstar, it pounding on her, and all around Cylon fighters and Vipers pounding on each other.  So far only the Vipers had had much luck.  The Galactica had squawked them a score of sixteen Cylons, but Rat Frak had also seen two of his comrades blown up.  All he'd gotten himself was a nice black gouge running down the white nose of his Mark II from a shell that glanced off his canopy.  Apparently even Cylons fired the occasional dud.

He was close enough now to take a shot at the nukes, but his first burst missed.  A few of his shells spattered against Galactica's hull but most streaked off into space.  Then the other two Vipers joined him and a three-way crossfire blew the nukes back to the Colonies.  Thank the frakkin' lords they hadn't armed.

A few seconds later the three Vipers zipped through the debris cloud at high speed, banked just in time to miss the Galactica by less than a half klick and reversed course to return to the main fray.

They weren't quite there when the deathstar went nova, filling space with white light that limned every craft into high relief.  The Cylon fighters stopped firing immediately, and when the explosion's energy wave hit them, they tumbled in crazy abandon like sprigs of thistledown in the wind.  The Vipers shook and fought against the turbulence.

"Would you look at that?" the Rat murmured over the wireless to no one in particular.  Around him Cylon after Cylon tumbled around in space.  "Get the big bug and you get 'em all."

That was definitely a new piece of intel.  Must be a Cylon modus operandi peculiar to home world sector.

High Card was singing his victory song, "Look at me!  Look at me!  I'm somethin' to see!"  It must have been his nuke that had taken out the Big Bug.  High Card was Rat Frak's best bud, but he was just a little crazy.

Keener's voice reported into Galactica, and a moment later Rat Frak heard, "Return to Ninth Heaven.  This is a recall.  All Vipers return."  He couldn't hear much after that.  There were too many war whoops over the phones.  The Rat took his place in formation, but being a practical type of guy he wondered if he'd have time to take a leak while the deck crews refueled, rearmed and reloaded their Vipers for the next launch.

.

Kara had always thought individual Cylons must be incredibly stupid.  A firefight with a single tin head was a lot like taking potshots at a pumpkin.  You just flew with a wild hair up your ass and they had no frakkin' idea how to fight back.  Too easy, Sergeant, as Kara had said many times in basic training back when she was sixteen and knew everything.  Too easy, gimme something harder.

But even an idiot would have noticed the interstellar drone sitting here in the middle of the city square, or would have been mildly curious about the armed humans that had entered the city's central tower through a pair of giant doors.

Valerii had said no, that curiosity was optional Cylon programming and apparently she was right.  Kara hadn't seen so much as a turned eyestalk through the ramp access in the deck.

Traffic walked, rolled and buzzed by constantly -- chrome toasters just like in the history books, some similar but leaner models, a pair of walking scissors -- all legs and no head, a refrigerator shape that floated on an air cushion, and something that looked like a beach ball with eyes.  It could have been a beach ball, but the closest beach was about a thousand-year road trip away.

Kara sucked in her breath.  A troop of women dressed in ugly gray knee-length shifts walked in ragged rank and file in the direction of the main tower.  A moment later they entered the doors that Kelly had used.  Their faces had been the same color as their clothes and had the care-worn look of the permanently trodden upon.  Kara had seen plenty of that back home in the Caprica ghettos.  They could only be slaves, human slaves.

Frak Kelly, Kara couldn't sit here any more.  Nothing was going to get any of them out alive if the Cylons started shooting.  In fact, frak the whole battle plan, Kara thought.  Lee was probably already dead and she wasn't going to sit here and die without firing a single shot to avenge him.  Standing up she struggled out of her helmet and metal collar.  Sidearm in hand she cautiously oozed down the ramp, expecting to be stopped at any moment.

.

"Well, which way, Valerii?" Captain Kelly asked his patience shredded to tatters by the constant stream of Cylons that marched, rolled and strolled past him and his anxious team.  But so far it was as if the tin heads couldn't see the humans in their midst.  The inattention was more than freaky, it was terrifying and it made Kelly ill with anticipation.  He wanted to bolt up every side passage looking for safe haven or at least a good solid wall to put his back against and start shooting.

Instead he and his team followed Valerii down the gray marble hall.  To their right and left, floor to ceiling glass windows opened into room after room of what looked like either coffins or outsized cribs.  Between the oblong boxes patrolled two-meter tall stainless steel ogres that sprouted multiple folded arms from the top of their domed heads.

Stopping in front of a pair of glass doors, Valerii pressed her palms against them, but she was too weak to get them open.  "Here.  This one," she said.

Kelly gestured for Gaines to wait just outside while he, Gamert and the rest checked the area.  Gaines brought his firearm to ready and standing with his back tightly against the glass viewing window, he looked both ways down the hall, back and forth, back and forth, his head swinging fast enough to make Kelly dizzy.  Gaines seemed about ready to jump out of his skin.  They all were.

As far as Kelly could see the room was identical to all the others they'd passed.  It definitely didn't hold the sought after monolithic central cybernetic processor or even a communications terminal, just coffins and a pair of stainless steel robots trundling heedlessly back and forth on their mysterious mission.

"What the frak is in here?" Kelly asked, walking toward the closest open box.  "We're looking for central control, not the morgue."  He looked down.  Inside lay glorious golden skin, rounded curves and small pointed breasts.  Long black hair streamed from her head and curly short black hair painted a midnight "V" where her legs joined her body.  It was one of Sharon Valerii's Cylon sisters, healthy and untouched by the Redleken generator.  It breathed slowly and evenly.  Kelly stepped half way to the next box.  It held the same … the one after that was empty but the next held another Valerii and so did the next and the next.

"Damn you for a frakkin' traitor," Kelly snarled.  Raising his weapon he spun back on her, but Valerii had collapsed to the floor in a pile of orange coverall, bones and flaccid flesh.  She could barely hold up her head under the weight of the Redleken helmet.  Heppenmeier had a pistol out and was moving in for an assassination-style headshot, but Kelly muffled a shout of, "No!" and waved at the pair of stainless mechanicals that had turned in their direction.  So far the 'bots had made no other move, but their red eyes scanned back and forth, weighing and analyzing the organics.

Valerii's head tilted up with difficulty and she mumbled so low that Kelly had to take a step in her direction, "Processor's up fifteen … floors … take stairs five more doors.  Can't make it … never was.  Let me die here … maybe a chance for me.  Please."  The words came in gasps, as spaced out and broken as the woman that said them.

A chance … a chance.  That's what they all wanted was a chance.  "Alright, but the helmet stays on.  Gamert, tie her up."

"With what?" the big man protested.

Kelly rolled his eyes.  "I don't know, your dirty shorts maybe?  Find something!"

From the hall Gaines stuck his head in the doors.  "Something big's coming," he said.  "I recommend we vamoose outta here!"

After waving his men to exit the room, Kelly unclipped the Redleken control from his belt, turned its dial up all the way, tossed it in the nearest empty coffin box and ran to follow, leaving Valerii still on the floor, her muscles contracted and moaning in endless breathless gasps.


	14. Chapter 10d

Adama's grandfather had owned Cylons.  "More'n a hundred," as he used to tell the rapt little Billy Adama.  "All exactly alike 'cept for the numbers on their necks.  Damned stupid id-juts.  Couldn't tell their ass from a hole in the ground.  'Bout ran my factory broke."

"But grandpa!" the little boy had protested.  "They're winning the war!"

"There's just too frakkin' many of 'em!  They're as thick as bees on a horncow carcass!"  At that point Grandma had come in and scolded her husband for cursing in front of their young grandson.

Little Billy Adama had found the carcass imagery disturbing, to say the least, but he'd never forgotten it.  More than fifty years later the Cylons were still as thick as bees on a carcass and they had stingers to match.

The Galactica had jumped twice again, each time a tiny increment closer to the Cylon home planet.  The deathstars weren't ignoring them anymore.  Six brutes had clustered around their last site and pounded holes in the Galactica's shields, although not yet breaking through the extra insulation.  There were already three deathstars at the new site and Adama expected the earlier six to FTL in at any second.

The shot counters had stilled.  Abby and Bertha, the dorsal A and B railguns, had run dry, and they were reduced to calling the deathstars bad names.  He'd told Lee to cork the Vipers in their tubes.  They had very little ammunition left.  The enemy suppression batteries still had a few minutes, but he'd need covering fire when they launched Shiva.

This last jump had to be perfect, no mistakes.  They were going to be practically bouncing off the atmosphere.  Gaeta looked up from the plotting table and nodded, refraction from the cracked glass streaked like war paint from his chin up to his brow.  Anderson was already at the jump computer keying in.

Lee stood next to Adama, poised on the balls of his feet like a fighter, his hands balled into his fists at his side.  He wasn't used to waging war by remote control.  Adama knew the feeling.  It had taken him years to lose the urge to pummel the consoles and he still kicked them now and then.

"Execute when ready," Adama said.  "Launch Vipers on clear space confirm and, Amy, get me a line to the Shiva crew."

.

Chapter six of the Holy Scrolls tells how the first Colonials left Kobol chased by the man-eating World Snake, a metal monster with feet that crushed human bodies into pulp and a mouthful of fire.  Here on the Cylon home world it had been reborn.  That thing out there was a man-eater, pure and simple and it was after them.

Tucked into the tiny closet with four of his men, Kelly panted and watched through a tiny slit as an articulated, shiny gold mechanical a dozen meters long reared up half way to the vaulted ceiling of the corridor intersection.  Pushing the closet's door gently closed, he felt around for a light switch.  There wasn't one so he leaned back, tried to get control of his breathing and thought.

Two straight lines of sound sensor holes had run down the whole length of the Snake.  It probably could hear them out its asshole.  And instead of the usual Cylon-style black slit/red light visor, round "eyes" had plated its head with only the area around the neck joint free.  It probably saw like a horse or horncow, Kelly thought, everywhere but directly behind.

They'd lost Gaines.  He lay out there crushed, the black box of the transmitter on the floor a three meters further on.  The box's Cylon-like oscillating red light had boggled the Snake's robotic brain.  After staring into it for one frozen, hypnotic moment, the Snake had gently shoved it away.  Peeking out again, Kelly could see the red ball still swinging its tick, tick, tick.  If they could recover it, there was still hope.

Kelly turned back to the other four men.  A tiny sliver of light from the door reflected off the faces.  "You and you," Kelly mouthed, pointing at Gamert and one of the nameless recruits.  Shedding his rifle and pulling a long-handled grenade from his belt, he gestured for them to do the same then he pantomimed what he wanted them to do:  Arm a grenade, thrust it into the Snake, run like Hell.

Turning to Heppenmeier and the other recruit, the one with the flame thrower/hard shot combo, Kelly swung his hand through the air, flat and palm down.  That meant, "Cover us."

Another look through the door.  Outside the Snake had made a gyration, placing a shiny gold ass in their direction.  It had given up its high horse vantage point and now it's head swung close to the floor like it was scent-hunting the humans.

"Now!" Kelly shouted and Heppenmeier and Recruit One burst out of the closet.  Firing continuously they ran in opposite directions around the parameter of the intersection.  Kelly, Gamert and Recruit Two followed pounding toward the Snake.

The firearms made a racket like an interstellar freighter coming in for a landing.

Recruit One alternately triggered the flamethrower and machine gun of his combo, firing mostly for the Snake's head.  Some of the eye sensors had cracked.  It didn't like that much and screamed what could only be hexadecimal curses.  Turning in Recruit One's direction, it knocked him and the combo half way across the room, opened its mouth and threw a little flame of its own.

Although Recruit One was already up and on the run, his cloth helmet cover and body armor caught fire, and yelling he fell to the floor and rolled.  From the other side of the room Heppenmeier had been firing his electromag fruitlessly the whole time.

Finding this activity totally engrossing, the Snake didn't spot the men coming up on its tail.

Gamert's long legs got him there first with Kelly only a half step behind.  Recruit Two, a smaller man, brought up the rear.  In a smooth ballet they armed their grenades, thrust and spun to retreat.  On the run again, Kelly waved for Recruit Two to beat his ass back the way he'd come.  He ran.  They all ran.

The world exploded.

.

Kara had followed the parade of gray human women deep into the Cylon tower, not really sure what she was looking for other than a place to die.  She'd recognize that when she found it:  It'd be somewhere with a lot of Cylons, preferably stacked from floor to ceiling.

Leaving the marble-lined ground-floor corridors, the gray women had climbed at least a dozen flights of stairs maybe more.  Passing out of the stairwell through a set of blank double doors, they were walking a wide door-lined hall when a hoarse boom echoed up from below.

It couldn't be Shiva.  That would make the building wag like a metronome or maybe even flatten it, depending on where it hit the planet.  This just rattled Kara's ears and made everyone in the hall stagger.  That's when one of the slave women saw who had been following them and began to scream.

"Hush.  I'm not going to hurt you," Kara said, gesturing her peaceful intentions with one empty hand while quickly hiding her pistol with the other.

"No, you're most certainly not," a familiar woman's voice said from behind her.  "Hand the gun over, Lieutenant Thrace, or it will be my pleasure to shoot you."

No, it couldn't be, Kara thought.  But that loathsome voice had been unmistakable.

There were times when one really, truly hated being right about a person.

She slowly turned to look at Serena Adama, who was as usual beautifully dressed, coiffed and painted.  Her manicured hands held a tastefully compact automatic weapon.

"Come now, Starbuck," Serena cooed.  "You used to tell Lee that I made Cylons look like … what was it you said?  'A pack of pansies'?  Don't you trust your instincts?"

Kara debated charging the smaller woman but decided if she wanted to commit suicide, there'd be plenty of time later, and if worse came to worse, there was always the poison pill in her flight suit pocket.  Taking out even just a copy of Serena would have been pure joy, but Kara intended to up her Cylon score by at least a couple of dozen before she died.  And the gray slave women huddled together like a flock of ragged, anxious pigeons behind her were directly in the line of fire.  Somehow Kara was pretty sure that Serena wouldn't care much if she hit one of them.

Slowly bending over she put her handgun on the floor and straightened with raised hands.  "Oh, I've got good instincts alright, I'm just surprised there's more than one of you.  How do you ever figure out which is the prettiest?"

Serena snorted, daintily blowing out only the tiniest puff of air.  "Sticks and stones, Kara, sticks and stones.  Now turn around and follow those slaves.  God has asked to see you."

.

"Yes, Sir.  Yes, Sir, I will."  Socinus dropped the hand that had been pressing the spacesuit helmet against his right ear and nodded to the handful of deck crew gathered around him.  After refueling, re-arming and reloading the Vipers in the launch tubes and doing some emergency patchwork on 33562 and 89767, they'd been told to put on their suits and get ready for Shiva launch.

Ever since they'd been standing around in the starboard landing bay kicking gravity-booted heels waiting for this moment.  "Commander Adama says to get Shiva ready.  And he also says pray for the Lords' blessing."

The deckhands scattered.  They'd been practicing this for the past three days and had it down perfect, at least in theory:

Step one -- open the landing bay.

Step two -- untie the asteroid and adjust the inertia regulators sticking out of it like cloves on a ham.  For that Chief Callie had helped Socinus rig a gang switch, but one of the port bow regulators still tended to come off a millisecond late, making the whole rock tip in that direction, which led to …

Step three -- correct Shiva's float.

Step four -- using a fraction of the rock's inertia, pull it out of Galactica.  And finally …

Step five -- the one there'd been no way to practice.  Regulators full off and all of Shiva's momentum re-invested for an irresistible, unavoidable collision with the Cylon planet.  It had to be launched close in and quickly enough that a deathstar couldn't intercept.  It had to be done right.

Halfway to the inertia controls, the FTL jump distortion hit Socinus.  He just staggered and plowed on.  He'd been through that hell four times today already, and his inner ears were numb and his gut empty.  As he arrived at Shiva's control center inside the forward portal, the pod began to grind open.  Of course there was no sound in the airless bay, but he could feel the old battlestar's worn-out gears vibrating the deck.  Outer space opened up before him with a truly impressive panoramic view of a very ugly gray planet.

Waving to the crewmen ready to release the tie-downs, Socinus picked up the jury-rigged switch.  That's when he began to feel the "thump, whoosh, thump, whoosh" that Vipers were making in the launch tubes below.  Even with Shiva filling the starboard landing bay, they'd had to use its tubes.  There'd been no other way to launch out fast enough.

The tie-downs loose, the unhitched lines floated free like snakes swimming in water as Socinus first flipped the gang switch then quickly eased the control just a half hair to swing Shiva's nose slightly to starboard and straighten her out.  The deck hands were running for the bulkheads and access hatches as fast as their magnetic boots would let them, which wasn't very fast.  The rock floated, magnificent and ready to hammer death into the Cylon home world.  Easing the control forward, Socinus began to guide Shiva out of its temporary home.

In front of the landing pod's portal, space shimmered with the distortion of an arriving FTL jump.  A second later the rapier sharp arms of a deathstar solidified and Socinus's view of his target disappeared.

Within seconds space became thick with Cylon Raiders, two of which were slotting for a run at the landing bay portal.  Shiva had cleared less than half of its length, and Socinus had no place to run and a job still to do.  His hand hovered over the gang-switch, unsure whether the deathstar could deflect the Shiva asteroid or whether he should risk ripping off the landing bay with an early launch.  He was supposed to get a launch order, but it might never come.  He continued to ease it out, but slowly, oh so slowly.  While the inertia generators still operated, even a rail gun hit could deflect it.

.

This time Rat Frak had been the third Viper out of the starboard tubes.  Bad luck of the draw, he figured.  Everyone knew the first Vipers out were the most likely to be picked off, but he burst clear, banked over and was immediately squeezing his trigger in reflex, missing the Raider that had popped into his sights like a rabbit out of a hole but catching the next one behind it.  It exploded with a satisfying flash of light and shrapnel.

It wasn't hard to hit a Raider.  They were everywhere.  Raiders were streaming from a deathstar's launch ports like ants at a picnic.

The Cylon homeworld filled most of nearby space, a gray unforgiving ocean of gravity that would swallow him whole if he didn't respect it.  Rat Frak never fought so close to a planet.  He felt crowded.

And CAG and CIC had said the deathstars were crowding the Galactica, which was a fantabulous understatement, as Rat's mother would have said.  Another deathstar shimmered in and practically rammed her head on.  A third flashed in just aft of her thrusters.

Rat Frak was close enough to Galactica see Shiva's nose sticking out of the starboard launch bay and two Raiders that were going in for a kill.  He got closer -- close enough to see the red of their oscillating eyes and the white of their cannon fire.  "Piss on you," he muttered as he pulled the trigger and a stream of shells cut the first Raider in two.

His trigger clicked on empty as he flew through its debris and the Rat didn't try to pull up to miss the other one.  Poking out the red eye, he hit the central brain case straight on, and together they exploded in a ball of white fire.

.

When the draedus went crazy, showing deathstars so close they looked like moons, Lee Adama gave up his last scraps of hope for survival.  They were as surrounded as an ancient wagon train on the Caprican plains.  His Vipers were putting up a magnificent fight, but they were outnumbered, outgunned and almost out of shells.  Standing next to Lee, the Commander kept his eyes focused on the draedus panels and only occasionally barked out an order or a question, either to the others in CIC or into the headphone microphone he held.  He hadn't yet ordered the asteroid launched.

The Galactica's guns had gone completely dry.

There wasn't really much they could do or say except wait.

Kara was dead.  Lee knew it; he felt it in his bones, a certainty that didn't go away or soften, but his heart didn't have time to hurt.  Three deathstars were pounding them with heavy rail-gun fire and the CIC shivered and shook.  The launch pods must be doing the same, which did not bode well for Shiva's launch stability.

The Cylons may have guessed the Galactica's plan, if computing probability differentials could be called guessing.  The deathstars had moved in too close to deploy nukes safely so what were they trying to do?  Board Galactica, ram it or just scare the shit of them?  He didn't know.  His father probably did.

A new hit shook CIC badly enough to knock both Lee and his father to the deck.  A close-by set of temporary wires burst into flames, fire racing away from it to the bulkheads where instrument panels began to explode.

Lee sat up but his father didn't.  Blood streamed from a cut in the older man's forehead.  Grabbing the headphones that had been in his father's hands, Lee screamed into the microphone, "Launch, Lords frak it!  Get it out of there!  Launch!"

He didn't know if the Shiva crew heard him or not.  The whole ship tipped toward port and everyone tumbled across CIC.

.

Recognizing the long burn scar down the Viper's nose, Socinus had watched with awe as it took out the two Raiders.  The Rat had given up his life so easily.  Would he be able to do the same?

It may come to that very soon.  During Galactica's tormented writhing, Socinus had been forced to tip Shiva more and more to keep the trajectory pointed planet-wards.  Half of the asteroid hung out of the landing bay, the other half scraped the overhead.  When it launched, this whole end of the bay would go with it.  And probably Socinus too.

Over his suit phones, he heard a launch order.  It didn't sound like the Commander's raspy voice, more like his son the acting X.O.  But it was a valid order and a call to arms and death.  Socinus was ready.   All hesitation gone, his thumb came down firmly and every one of Shiva's inertia generators switched off.

The piece of rock left its human handlers in an orbital speed hurry, its aft end cutting through the landing pod's metal overhead and girders like a dull knife through wet paper, pulling and ripping long gashes all the way to bulkheads.

Hitting the portal's rim, it bent out the frame.  A rough piece of rock broke off and tumbled along inside the hull until it followed Shiva and the loose, torn off pod pieces out the door.

This pod will never close again, Socinus thought.

Then he realized that he was still thinking, still alive, which meant he had to try to stay that way.  Turning, he ran for the airlock and the passageways that led to Galactica's main hull.  He yelled into his suit phones as he pounded along, pulling each magnetic boot painfully free, "Evacuate the pod!  Evacuate the pod!  They'll have to jettison it to get Galactica away from here."  He hoped his crew had already left.

With his back turned to the wrecked portal, Socinus didn't see Shiva hit the deathstar, spearing the evil octopus through its dead metal heart.  And even if he had looked, he wouldn't have seen the asteroid emerging from the other side because it didn't.  Asteroid and deathstar fell together toward the planet's surface.

In the airlock Socinus turned off his mag boots and slammed his gloved fist into the inner-hatch override switch's glass covering.  He squeezed through the slowly widening opening and ran for all he was worth down the corridor, trying to reach the main hull gate before it slammed shut.  He had ten seconds.

He made it, sliding in under the closing gate like a pyramid player slides into home.  Behind him, on the other side of the closed gate the explosive charges that freed the starboard landing pod had begun to go off, the reports vibrating through the hull and dully thump, thump, thumping in the passageway's thinned out atmosphere.

Over Socinus suit phones he picked up the Viper recall.  "Thirty seconds to closure," CIC said.  "Combat landing, port landing bay only."

Staggering to his feet in the half-deflated space suit, Socinus began tipsily walking toward the port landing bay.  They were going to need deck hands over there.

He was less than half way across the Galactica and still had half of the space suit on when he heard over the PA, "Jumping now."

.

At first Sharon Valerii's eyes refused to open more than a slit, even when she felt the robotic nursery attendant pick her up and place her in a tightly enclosed space -- probably one of the empty coffins.

The spasms that wracked through her body left her with barely enough energy to keep her heart beating.  And she focused her entire attention on that until she felt something smooth, narrow and metallic under her hand -- the Redleken control.  Galvanized by the possibility of relief, her eyes popped fully open; and moving her thumb slightly, she switched the Redleken off.

But Sharon still couldn't remove the helmet or do anything else but pass out.  So that's what she did, and blackness closed in on her like the Lords' blessing.


	15. Chapter 10e

Kara's fingers curled into a fist so tight the nails cut into her palms. She ached to just spin around and punch some blood, ochre or whatever out of Serena's manufactured head and decorate the white marble floor they were tip-tap-toeing across with nice red splatters. But she didn't. One dead Cylon would be great, especially if it were Serena. But many, many dead Cylons would be greater. And hey, the bitch was taking her to that God crap-head. Talk about a golden opportunity to do some damage. Woo-hoo, the good kind of news. Almost good enough to make Kara's knees stop knocking together.

She was scared. Holy shit, she was terrified. By all 102 of the frakkin' Holy Lords, Kara was more frightened than anything she could remember. Not for herself, but for her babies and humanity's comeback tour back on Zodiac. If Serena's littermate had been betraying ever since Judgment Day, which explained a hell of a lot, like why they could never outrun the Cylons, but it also meant they might know about humanity's last hope. Maybe. Oh God, please no. Please?

Serena once again poked Kara with that polite little pistol, and Kara snarled a word-less obscenity back over her shoulder.

"Just hurry up, will you?" Serena said. "My God doesn't have all day to wait around for a human."

Ambling along Kara rolled her shoulders and wagged her head trying not to go into attack mode. If the Cylons' God lived here, this tower had to be their Heaven, right? No wonder they'd sprung for the white marble and gold trim. The toilets were probably platinum. It was even gaudier than the ancient, 10th-century Lords' Temple back in Caprica City and that was going some.

Ahead the column of female slaves stepped into sunlight in a new section of the hall. For a dazzling moment became the wingless angels that were supposed to show up at a Lords-blessed death to take heroes off to the Higher Realms.

When Kara passed the same spot, she figured maybe she'd missed the dying part 'cause she was certainly flying. On her right, just an arm's length away, the entire wall had changed to clear, frame-less windows that looked straight out on a blue sky, and straight down below to Cylon Central spread out like Caprica City in mid-summer. Lush green trees alternated with white buildings while black robotic dots scampered on a brilliantly reflective cement pavement as if their lives had some meaning and purpose other than killing and being killed in their frakkin' endless war.

Spacing had hammered vertigo out of Kara years ago, but she was more than 14 stories up and only a few feet from a sheer drop with no nice safe Viper or Galactica under her butt. She veered to the other side of the hall.

There no doors marred the marble expanse, at least none of the obvious kind with handles and hinges, but as Kara walked along every five or six meters a pair of cracks ran from floor to ceiling. When they'd reached about the middle of the building, the lead slave halted and spread arms as if to pray. After deep moaning groan thrummed from well-practiced slave throats, the wall cracked wide-open and peeled back. The women marched in, each kissing the doorjamb as they passed through.

"Follow them," Serena's drippy sweet voice ordered from behind.

"Yes, Sir," Kara muttered, but added sotto voce, "Up yours." Flexing an arm, she grabbed it at the elbow. "Shove it up to here" that had meant back in the rough neighborhood where Kara grew up.

Serena didn't say anything. Maybe Cylon programming didn't cover obscene gestures.

Entering the tall chamber, Kara squinted and her hands came up to shield her eyes. If the hall outside had been bright as a greenhouse, this was dazzling but in an entirely different source-less way. There were no windows, just light. It came from everywhere and left no shadows. In the relentless illumination Kara could pick out the individual threads on the slave women's ragged clothing.

The slaves gathered around a translucent pillar centering the room. One, a tall gray-haired gal, clapped her hands three times then with her head bowed in either humility or trepidation, put her hands on the gleaming glass and with a slight grunt pushed. A curved pair of doors slid in and to either side to reveal ...

God? Frak, if that thing is a God, Kara thought, I'm a Cylon.

The Cylon God was a man. At least Kara thought it was. The sex wasn't in doubt, since the creature didn't wear a stitch of clothing. But the species was another matter. It had the general outline of human -- one dick, one head, two arms and two legs -- but that's where the resemblance stopped. Hairless gray skin draped an endoskeleton without any cushioned rounding of muscle. Its eyes hid in two bottomless black holes, and its mouth cut a lipless slash. Something black and invasive traced paths under the thing's skin only to sprout in fine-haired tufts that fastened onto the pillar's interior wall. Red, black, yellow and green filled tubes cascaded from the head, chest and gut, the fluids pulsing, dripping, flowing.

God needed an image consultant and a makeover. God was vile.

Then God moved His head slightly to one side, and Kara realized He was looking at Serena. Finally He spoke in a voice that grunted in Kara's ears like a pig in a garbage dump. "You may leave Us, Seven Slash Two Four Nine."

Serena's answer held no subservience. "No, my Lord God," she stated flatly, the look she gave at Kara said plainer than words, "Don't get any ideas, Thrace. I'm not going anywhere."

Even in Heaven there is war, Kara thought. Apparently God and His Cylons did not get along.

But to Kara's disappointment, God did not chew out Serena for insubordination. Hanging upright, He wheezed, gasped and groaned, as He watched the slave women crawl up to Him on their knees. Pulling out some cloths from under their robes, they began to do disgusting things to His Body. They seemed to be … yes, they were definitely giving Him a bath. Dripping cloths stroked over the loose skin bag, dipped into a shallow basin that somehow appeared in the base of God's pedestal, were wrung out, and came back again.

"You are Starbuck," God finally said.

Kara giggled. The Cylon God knew her name? Now _that_ was notoriety. This whole audience with God was priceless. Too bad she'd never have a chance to tell Lee about it. He would have laughed until he'd cried. Thinking of Lee straightened out Kara's thinking. Lee was dead. Soon she would be too. "That's a big yeppers, God. Starbuck, that's me."

The head moved slightly and piss-pit eyes squinted. "You are very pretty." A long gasp filled in a pause before He finally continued with, "I am Gabriel Sochard, I invented Cylons and I've lived Hell for fifty years." After His long speech God aka Sochard coughed for a minute straight.

Oh, yeah? Kara thought. Like I'm supposed to care?

Sochard's head rolled once again to Kara's left. "Seven Slash Two Four Nine, two more deathstars have deployed to pursue Galactica."

Sochard cum God's tired eyes closed, his face relaxed and Kara wondered if the bastard had mercifully died and saved her the effort. Killing him was going to be like squishing a bug. She'd punch God's insides to his outsides, after which Serena would shoot her in the back, she'd die and it'd be all over. No fun at all.

A minute passed then two. Sochard still hung lifeless. Kara was considering ripping up the frak-fart's carcass, Serena's pistol be damned, when a spasm flapped Sochard straight up as brass bright as a flag in a high wind. His eyes flew open smoking hot.

"Did you really think your humans would be safe on Zodiac?" Sochard growled, his voice filled with the hate of his fifty billion Cylon subjects.

Frak it, the Cylons knew about Zodiac. That knocked out what little stuffing Kara had left. "I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard …"

Sochard interrupted her. Plainly he hadn't been listening. Maybe he was deaf. "My Cylons are strong. We are the future of the universe. Today … tomorrow … we will … we are …" The voice trailed off as Sochard's head sagged.

Kara looked to Serena, still uneasy that Sochard had mentioned Zodiac. She forced a laugh. "This is your God? I've seen fresher pickled fish."

Surprisingly Serena didn't answer right away, she just watched the slave women massaging Sochard's hanging limbs. "I can talk to my God," she finally said, "and He answers." She turned in Kara's direction. "Tell me has the humans' God ever talked to you? Have you ever seen one of your precious Holy Lords? And why did your compassionate God let 30 billion of you die in one day? Why doesn't He at least save the rest? You know the truth already, Kara. Your God fought mine and lost. Your God is dead and the Human Race is over and done with."

Kara snarled back, "Not until the last of us are crushed into the ground, and even then you'll be slipping around in our goo."

Sochard grunted and both Kara and Serena looked his way. He was slowly coming back awake. Plainly the bastard was dying, frak, he'd died a long time ago, but the Cylons were still using him as some sort of central node, maybe legitimizing commands by pushing them through the "God route". Who knew the Cylon mind?

Sochard's eyes opened again, all the fire of a moment before gone. This time they were black and empty. His mouth opened and he sighed. "Kiss me, Starbuck. It's been a long time since a pretty girl kissed this old man."

For a moment Kara stood in slack-mouthed astonishment, then she grabbed her chest, bent over and made as if to toss her cookies. "Pardon me. Sudden attack of nausea," she said as she stuffed a hand into her mouth.

"Very funny, Kara," Serena said. "Stand up and put your hands behind your back." Obeying a wave, a couple of the slaves scampered over from the bathing operation with a length of wet cloth, but stopped a few feet away from Kara, plainly terrified, and Serena had to threaten them with her gun.

"You'll want to get that tight," Kara said to the slave who sidled around to her back. The slave paused, looked at Kara wide-eyed, then quickly away. The slave's knot wasn't tight at all, but Kara didn't pull against it. She had other plans and they didn't involve escape.

Having completed their bath assignment, the slave women bowed first to Serena and then to their God. A moment later they all scampered out the door. Serena waved her pistol and shoved Kara within a foot of Sochard. Kara stumbled, righted herself and looked up into a face that sagged on its cheekbones like an over-done pot roast.

Serena seemed to think Kara was too scared to fight back. The stupid bitch-let never could see what was right in front of her, in this case, literally. Kara was scared all right, but not of Serena.

"Scared spit-less," she was praying silently. "Precious Holy Lords, keep me scared spit-less and I will go to Temple every Lords' Day." The Lords listened. Her mouth was as dry as space.

Grabbing one of Kara's bound arms, Serena pushed her into Sochard's flaccid body. "If you don't want to die right now, I suggest you pucker up, Thrace."

Pursing her lips, Kara's tongue pushed forward the suicide pill she'd popped in her mouth during the upchuck routine. When her lips met Sochard's, it took only a quick squirt to get it out of her mouth and into his. Then pushing past a dry, flaccid tongue, she hockey-pucked the deadly pill down Sochard's throat and into his gut.

At that point, he must have realized what was going on because he twitched and gasped, but Kara didn't pull back. In fact, despite halitosis that put the Galactica's septic tank to shame, Kara kissed Sochard until Serena pulled her off. "Man, your God gives good tongue," Kara said.

"What did you do?" Serena screamed, her eyes on Sochard's lifeless, hanging body.

"Killed him, I hope," Kara snarled.

"You bitch!" Serena's pistol came up.

"Takes one to know one!" Kara shouted as she made a desperate dive for safety on the far side of Sochard's pillar, tugging at the towel binding her hands as she fell which came apart. Kara managed easily to land on a shoulder and forearm, rolling clear as a shot shattered marble where her butt had just been.

As it happened she needn't have bothered.

The lights flickered and went out. In the dead blackness Serena's pistol continued to flash and bark, ricochets spinged and sparked, and shattered glass sang a symphony.

Lee murmured to Casper who had begun sponging at the blood on Commander Adama's forehead, "Get back to your post, Soldier. I'll take care of him."

Casper looked like he'd been kicked, but he nodded, wavered to his feet and picking his way through the litter on the deck, made his way back to the draedus console.

Sopping tentatively at the sluggish red flow, Lee glanced up at Gaeta and asked, "Where are we, Lieutenant?"

His face as white as stellar drift Gaeta was at the FTL console cradling the blue key against his chest. His fast-blinking brown eyes couldn't quite keep up with the tears, and one rolled down his cheek and disappeared into an open mouth. Just five minutes earlier he'd fired the pins that had ejected the starboard landing pod. Six men had been left behind in the pod and when they'd jumped fifteen more in Vipers. They'd recovered only seven planes. Gaeta's voice was thick, as though his mouth didn't want to release any words. "I didn't have enough Tylium for much of a jump, Sir. We're only 7,500 klicks in the direction of the smaller moon. Barely shouting distance." A slender hand stole up to stifle stray sobs. "Is the Commander okay? He's not dead is he?"

Lee didn't know what to tell him. "No, not dead," he said quietly almost to himself, but it was more of a hope than actual knowledge. Then Lee remembered basic first aid training and added firmly, "The Commander's bleeding, and dead men don't bleed. Help me get him off the floor. Let's put him … over there, against the bulkhead."

Even after a none-too-gentle drag across the deck, the Commander's eyes remained closed. Gaeta returned to the navigation station, while Lee took off his jacket and tucked it under the bloody head. As he quickly pressed a fresh large bandage to the cut he muttered, "Don't you dare die before me, old man. We're going out together." Bending over, he kissed a rough cheek. "Together, you hear? You wait for me."

Amy knelt next to Lee. " If you don't mind, Sir. I'd like to take care of him. The guns are dry. My job's finished."

Lee nodded and hugged her across the shoulders with one arm. "Thanks, Amy." Surging back to his feet, he looked around. Everyone but Amy had returned to station and they were looking at him as if he had all the answers. Lee realized that he was in command. His first, last and only battlestar command. "Any of the deathstars catch up with us yet?"

Casper and Anderson answered in chorus. "No, Sir."

Gaeta was checking his wrist chrono and his two camera monitors. "Captain Adama, you'll want to see this. Shiva's impacting in 15 seconds."

Lee waved at the last functional overhead monitor, the one that usually showed the draedus. "Can you put it up there?"

Gaeta nodded and stepped across the aisle to stand next to Casper's console. A planet about the size of a postage stamp replaced the twin oscillating humps of the draedus grid.

Casper himself continued to look down at draedus readouts. "Of frak," he said, "we've got company. Two deathstars. One off the port bow, one underneath us. They're launching already. Launch Vipers, Sir?"

Lee glanced Casper's way then quickly back to the overhead monitor. Yeah, right, launch their last seven Vipers to ram a few more Raiders. That's all they could do. The Vipers were out of shells. "There's no point. Keep 'em corked. Let's watch the show."

Gaeta fiddled with the monitor resolution. Overhead the planet jumped five times larger, then five times bigger again until a single image filled the entire screen -- a splash tower a hundred klicks tall of dust, dirt and ground water climbing from where Shiva had hit target. Curved shock waves raced away from it across the planet's dull gray hard surface like water across a pond. The planet shook and visibly wobbled on its axis. It was magnificent.

Everyone in CIC watched, everyone except Casper. He loved his draedus, always had. "Frak! Oh my sweet God. Sir! Captain Adama! The deathstars are breaking off. They're … I don't know what they're doing, Sir! They're spinning around and … and … Frak! One of them just started firing on its own Raiders! We need to move away, Sir, or they're going to poke some holes in us too!"

Lee's heart jerked with hope. Maybe they weren't going to die just yet. He nodded at Gaeta and Anderson, who ran to the helm. When the maneuvering jets kicked in, the Galactica pivoted delicately on its short axis to point at clear space. The thrusters engaged, and for the last time that day the big ship ran away.

At first Sharon fought waking up, dreading the pain and confusion. But as her mind reluctantly swam out of the black end of the pool and into conscious awareness, she discovered pain-free placidity.

The mental robot monster that had been beating on her brain, demanding entrance was gone. She was Sharon Valerii again. A Colonial, a human soldier with a lover and a son. Not a Cylon obscenity without a name, family or friends.

Had her gamble paid off? Had she been reborn? It seemed so.

Sharon sobbed in relief and new lungs easily filled with air. She was lying down, probably in one of the cribs. Her eyes had opened but either she was blind or the robot tenders had turned out the lights. And there was no sound. Panicking a little, she sat up and called out, "Hello? Anyone there?" Or tried to, it had sounded more like a croaking bullfrog. No one answered anyway. She turned her head. There! Yes, over there something glowed, maybe it was the doors into the marble lined hall. She wasn't blind after all.

Scrambling out of the crib Sharon realized a few more details. She'd lost the Redleken helmet. She was naked.

Overhead the lights flickered off and on, as fat light pulses swam lazily up and down the tubular fixtures. Illumination puddled and shimmered around the room. At the back, the two robot attendants came to life again with a grind of metal on metal. They headed for what might be a garbage chute because they carting away a limp pile of vacated flesh.

Sharon looked away. She was alive not dead. That wasn't her anymore. The Holy Lords had granted her a miracle, a second chance. Grabbing a sheet from the empty crib and wrapping it toga-style, Sharon padded for the exit. The transport might still be outside the building. Kara might even let her onboard. What were a few more impossibilities to the precious, much-to-be-praised Holy Lords?

"You'd think that frakking Snake woulda given up by this time," Heppenmeier gasped.

Gamert, who was lugging their deactivation code transmitter on his back, only grunted. He didn't have enough breath for anything else.

Kelly on one knee and holding the electromag rifle at ready peeked over the parapet. Maybe two hundred meters down a piece of hell still slithered after them. Compared to its earlier lightning dashes, the Snake was inching along, but even with three-quarters of it blown away it pursued as tenaciously as a Piscean saccala prowling for shellbats. Slamming its shattered thorax against the steps in a bang-crunch-crunch-bang rhythm, the Cylon pulled managed a smart pace. The grenades had done a good job, just not good enough. It was still chasing them and they were still running.

One of the nameless recruits, a semi-short guy with an itchy trigger and no smile, twitched his face like it hurt. His name was Spencer. Yeah, Spencer Something. He wasn't nameless at all. Frak, Kelly get a grip. "She said … fif … teen …, Cap. Been … that …," Spencer wheezed, then coughed like an asthmatic seventy year old. He didn't say, "Can't go no more," but he meant it.

Kelly glared at the officious bastard. He was about to say, "Who's in charge of this mission?" when he realized who was really in charge:

Holy Lord Fat-Foot, the Frak Up, that's who. He'd frakked up good. They didn't have much hope of shutting down the Cylon Central Command with that Snake still after them and the mission clock ticking down to the wire.

Kelly turned to look down the stairway just as a hot belch of fire blew up. Involuntarily ducking, he swore and waved at his team to move back. They definitely weren't getting to their Raider that way.

The other recruit, Nameless Number One, had back on the tenth floor, taking their flamethrower combo with him to the Blessed Star Field. Kelly had thought they were all goners when the Snake had cornered them in a blind canyon of locked doors and towered over them like a ragged piece of death … and then it had stopped, frozen in mid-snarl.

Assuming the Snake's wiring had finally shorted out, they'd hung around gawking at it and kicking the tires, then Holy Frak, it had humped up and crunched the poor bastard recruit like a piece of fruit. The rest of them had started running and climbing, the lights flickering off and on overhead and the Snake rattling after them.

They'd gotten maybe two empty door-less corridors away from the stairwell and the Snake, trying to run but more like stumbling along. On Kelly's right stretched a wall-high-and-wide view of Cylon Wonderland, on his left more of the frakkin' white marble. Ahead -- way ahead -- a gaggle of humans or robots or something milled around, dark forms outlined against a sunlit side window. Suddenly they disappeared, maybe down another stairway. Behind Kelly the Snake's scrambling grew louder.

They couldn't go down and they sure as frak weren't taking another flight up. Kelly didn't know if they could make another ten feet. Puffing like mad he leaned against the marble wall, Gamert, Heppenmeier and Spencer too. Spencer had better be right. This had better be the right floor.

There'd been more than a few times that Kelly had regretted being a Colonial officer. This wasn't one of them. He had a job. He was going to do it. Pushing away from the wall, he told Spencer, "You and I are going to hold off the Snake while Gamert and Hep look for …"

He got no further. At his elbow the marble wall cracked from top to bottom, spreading rapidly into a hole full of pulsing light and dark. Starbuck shot through, an angry female stone out of a sling, a swarm of bullets chasing her. "Kill the bitch!" she screamed as she flew past Kelly, knocking him clear.

Hep and Spencer stumbled quickly away from the gaping doorway and line of fire, but Gamert, slower moving with the transmitter on his back, went down like a sacrificial calf in the fall harvest feast, a bullet in his neck. The transmitter caught two more bullets on the way down then shattered under Gamert's heavy, lifeless body.

Colonial curse words weren't potent enough. Kelly roared. But even in his rage, soldier reflexes kept him moving, and without even looking inside the room he sprayed it with his hard-shot rapid-fire until his trigger click-click-clicked on empty. No more bullets went in but none came out either.

Kelly turned to ask Starbuck what the frak that had been about, only to find she and Spencer had dragged her halfway down the hall. Looking back over his shoulder, Spencer was screaming about something and pointing like a schoolgirl.

Heppenmeier also stared back the way they'd come while fumbling frantically at the grenades on his belt. "I'll get it!" he screamed as lobbed one long and low. "Run, Cap! Run!"

Kelly glanced in the same direction. Oh damn, the Snake. Hep's grenade skittered under the metal carcass and caught.

They had to get away from this frakkin' glass before that grenade went off! Throwing away the empty hard shot, Kelly took off after Spencer and Starbuck. His weapon just missed Heppenmeier and bounced off the wall of windows.

The building began to shake.


End file.
